On the edge of Humanity
by masterdude21
Summary: "Everyone has a breaking point and the girls...met theirs." The would-be-hunters have fallen to corruption and darkness, turning their backs to the light and choosing terrorism and violence instead. The last hope for the people of Vale is a shady, paramilitary organization that barely establishes a foothold in the brutal city. Dark RWBY AU, contains heavy violence and adult themes.
1. Permafrost

~0~

_This is an Alternate Universe version of the Gray between Black and White. In this story, the four girls that made up RWBY have fallen to their darkest needs and urges, making Vale an even darker place than it was before. Beacon Academy has never existed and the only ray of hope is the independent, military organization called 'Onyx Academy', which readers of the Gray between Black and White will probably know as morally ambiguous…at best._

_So without further ado, let's get started!_

**~0~**

"_Today is Monday, day one of Onyx' official interference in the capital city known as Vale. All the High-Priority targets are somewhere in the city and our soldiers are ready to go to war. We will drag this hell-hole into the light even if it doesn't want us to."_

Lieutenant code-named "Yale", field officer dispatched to Vale.

_~0~_

**Monday, day one, 22:57**

Code-name "Lima Two-One" swept his black assault carbine down the street, checking every single hiding spot for potential enemy contacts. The night was darker than usual and even though his green tinted visor was perfectly for him to utilize his natural night-vision, he still couldn't be certain that he was alone in the darkness. From on top of his vantage point near a smoking chimney he could see that the shadows that were casted down by the light of the moon looked vaguely like people. Other chimneys, fire-escapes and even garbage cans warped the night to a frightening degree.

A cold feeling spread itself through the soldier's stomach as he slowly rose to his feet, still keeping his gaze squarely at the street that he was supposed to walk through. He wasn't scared –none of them felt fear in the face of combat. Fear had been one of the first things purged when training started. No, it wasn't fear that he was feeling. It was anticipation. Anticipation for the coming fight –for the messed-up warriors that he might meet in the coming hours. He hadn't been in Vale for more than fifteen months.

His orders had been very clear: engage the enemy with the intent on gathering Intel on their skills and capabilities. That was why he had his helmet-integrated camera streaming every second of his night; in case he didn't make it, command could still watch the vital moments of his downfall and formulate a method to defeat the enemy.

Not fear. Just anticipation. And perhaps he was also a bit nervous.

Two-One approached the edge of the roof and soundlessly dropped down. His powerful senses allowed him to see, hear and smell better than humans could. Nobody should be able to get the drop on him, as long as he kept to the shadows and moved carefully. But he understood that the people he was supposed to be fighting weren't just the best-of-the-best that Vale had to offer, but most of them were also supposed to be psychotic and slightly sociopathic. However, Intel had been wrong before and he did not want to find out in the middle of combat that his foe _could _make educated and rational decisions. Those things generally got people killed.

He started making his way down the broad street, sweeping his rifle left and right to maintain the proper vigilance. It was his task to engage the enemy, but if he took one misstep the enemy would kill him before he even had a chance to gather the proper intelligence.

And that would suck royally.

Rain started to pour from the cloudy sky as the lone soldier proceeded down the street, his knees slightly bend and his trigger-trigger softly twitching, ready to move in a moment's notice. His black helmet was watertight as his suit was and the streamlined armour plates wouldn't bog him down if the weather grew any worse.

Normally, Lima Two-One disliked the heavy plating that the soldiers had to wear in battle, but recent Operations had done miracles in changing his mind. The Onyx trooper BDU, or Battle Dress Uniform, was a very signature piece of equipment for all of their soldiers. It wasn't too bulky or heavy to move comfortably in combat and it was strong enough to deflect small- to medium-arms fire. It's Titanium and ceramic composite plates enabled the suit to withstand gunfire, explosives and heat-based attacks without buckling. Of course, sustained fire would break through with ease and an armour-piercing round would punch a hole clean through the suit.

But at the moment, he didn't worry about armour-piercing ambushes. He worried about the rain playing havoc with the environment, as smells grew sharper but sounds got different. The bodysuit underneath his armour would keep him at comfortable temperatures, so that part of the rain didn't get to him. No, his biggest problem was the fact that people could eventually sneak up on him by using the rain as cover. And if one of the four could sneak up on him, he'd be dead.

No excuses made.

He contacted that part of command that was devoted to his unit and reported in on his situation. "Monarch, this is Lima Two-One, how copy?"

"_Lima Two-One, this is Monarch. We copy all," _the old and familiar voice of his chain of command replied matter-of-factly. Monarch was the name of the man that had gotten Cal's team out of more than one hairy situation and he was the one that he trusted the most outside of his team. A veteran captain devoted to logistics and communication, Monarch was one of the more empathic individuals of command, taking care of those that depended on him with singular focus. He was the man that Cal wanted to oversee his strike against the raging elements of crime in Vale.

"I've proceeded to Area of Effect Charlie. Please advise."

Area of Effect Charlie was the first of three major hotspots where the big fish of the city were supposed to be active. It was basically a Schnee Dust Company warehouse, where at least two dozen citizens were working in a late nightshift. That place was the closest thing he got to meeting the top-class villains, as the Schnee Dust Company was a popular target for the likes of the White Fang and other crime syndicates. And at least one of the High-Priority targets was a very important member of the White Fang, so if there was going to be any action near AoE Charlie, it would be one of them.

"_Sweep teams have shown nothing; radar's clear for now. The rest of your team is standing by near the roofs, ready to spring the trap."_

"Roger that. Any idea on which target primary will be waiting for us?"

"_No clue, Two-One. Keep a close eye on the shadows and watch your field of fire. Friendlies might be between you and the target."_

"Copy," Cal replied and mentally facepalmed. The very first thing he did when stalking his enemy was keeping an eye on the shadows. He had been doing that for the entire damn evening trying to stay alive as he had four High-Priority targets that were ready to murder him the second he lowered his guard…and then there were the roaming gangs, drug dealers and other troublemakers that he had to avoid.

The soldier continued marching down the road, checking each and every shadow that might contain a possible threat. The warehouse was just ahead and from the looks of it, there weren't any large-scaled movements. But that didn't neccesarily have to mean anything.

Another ten meters of wet street, nervous breathing and rain running down his helmet and he had reached the end, stumbling upon an open intersection with a clear view of the harbor. His journey to hunt down one of the four priority targets had taken him to the Docks. To his left stood the tall Schnee Company building and to his right lay a large road that looked like it would be a good place to set up a market during daytime. The Dust Company's building looked a bit like a skyscraper, with a parking lot near the bottom part of the foundations.

In the second that it took him to get a good view of the Warehouse and analyze the situation, he knew he was in trouble.

Three figures were standing in front of the large building. Because the perimeter wasn't guarded by fences or guards, they were able to stand in front of the main entrance and keep to the shadows without being spotted by any passerby's. Two of them were clad in black clothes with a simple piece of white body-armour, with a black hood covering the back of their head. They were identical to each other, but the third person was unique in her appearance, so that had to be their leader. Cal could see that it was a 'she' because of her light-blue skirt that reached halfway down to her thighs. She had long, white boots with hints of red woven throughout their design and long, white sleeves that also had streaks of red running through the white and a red crest on the back of her light-blue jacket, with a black cross across it.

He recognized it as the Family-crest of the Schnee family. The cross meant that this person was against the company, so this was either a terrorist or a member of the White Fang, here to assault the building. Intriguing. Perhaps that one could lead him to one of the four fallen ones?

He could easily shoot the three of them, but he stayed his finger and remained hidden. That wouldn't lead him anywhere. He needed Intel and not dead bodies…and with the weird people hanging out in Vale, these three might as well be three late-night smokers, hanging out to puff a cigar or something like that. If he killed any of them he would have to live with the doubt of never having been sure.

On the other hand…the warehouse was supposed to be empty this late. Nobody should be hanging around the building and all the workers were supposed to be at home. These had to be the hostiles.

Hating himself for what he was about to do, he was about to step out of the shadows and speak to the trio of strangely-clad people, when the middle one –the one with the long, white hair that flowed down over her left shoulder- spoke up herself. It was a voice that was clearly used to command; a voice that was cold as ice and sounded matter-of-factly, but still possessed a quality that only the most battle-hardened officers could possess.

"And now you two can deal with the little bird spying on us."

His pulse quickened and he shot upright, aiming his rifle at the two men standing by the side of the woman as they turned around to face him. They were wearing grey fanglike masks, which identified them as White Fang members. The White Fang was an extremist Faunus organization that killed humans and fought the Schnee Dust company with tooth and nail, succeeding in their stupid civil only by throwing the Dust-distribution into disarray, making the war-effort against the Grimm even bleaker. Behind them, a large bomb was installed against the door, with wires leading up across the wall into the nearest windows. They had rigged the building to blow?

In short, they were targets of opportunity. Cal opened fire before either of them could pull out their rifle or sword and shot them both in their heads. His own armour-piercing round penetrated their feeble masks as easily as they did the silent night and punched right through them, exiting their skulls and causing a fine red spray of blood to stain the air and bricks behind them. The two weapons clattered to the floor a

The girl got some splatters of blood on her white clothes and she sighed, before turning around to face him.

Her face possessed a certain beauty; her attractive features were calm and controlled and the only thing that might disfigure her otherwise striking face was a large scar that ran over her eyelid, starting above her left eye and running down diagonally, ending an inch below the eye. The collar of her jacket was as red as the blood that had stained her skirt and she had a red ribbon around her slim waist, decorating her clothes needlessly.

Her face was calmer than his heart was upon realizing just who this female was. He had meant to encounter one of the Four, but only with proper preparation and leverage to use in a fight that he desperately wanted to avoid having. Not blindly stumbling into one of them unexpectedly. One-on-one with any of the High-priority targets and he would die, no doubt about that. He had not expected to be engaging one of them on such a short notice, let alone with him actually taking the initiative.

As he stared at the girl in front of him, who proceeded to stare at him with a cold expression, he started to realize that he was very boned. She wasn't the type to back down or stop after in a fight; she was going to go all the way and detonate the explosives, probably after killing him. To the soldiers of Onyx, she was known as Permafrost.

To the terrorized civilians, she was known as Weiss Schnee. Heiress to the Schnee Dust company, until something had happened that had driven her off her path of becoming a renowned Huntress, driving her into criminality and a streak of terror matched only by the cunning leader of the White Fang.

Lima Two-One felt his heartbeat fasten and despite the warmth of his suit, a chill ran down his spine. Permafrost was many things, but an equal to his prowess she was not. She was by far his greater and the only thing he had was his three-foot long assault rifle. The feeble piece of plastic and metal had lost of all of reassuring qualities and when compared to her might, it might as well been paintball gun.

He swallowed the lump that had formed in his throat and noticed that it had stopped raining, Or at least the area around the warehouse was devoid of rain. Was this due to the Schnee girl's powers? Or just extremely bad luck on his side? The rain would slow Permafrost down and enable him to see things that she couldn't. It would make the fight harder on her…but he wasn't as foolish as to think that simply because she was a girl she would get bogged down by the cold and the wetness. She could probably dance around naked in the middle of a snowy field and not feel a thing…while freezing him to death.

"Permafrost," he spoke to her, remembering the finer details of his mission. Engage, learn and survive. The ultimate result of him having marched through the dark city for two hours, dodging criminals and drug-addicts all the while, was to gather Intel on the four High-Priority targets. Onyx didn't want any of them killed for some reason…but that would make his fight ten times harder.

It was so hard to capture someone that was perfectly willing and capable of killing you in return.

"Another one?" She asked him, her emotionless and cold expression only shifting when she raised an eyebrow in a questioning gesture. "I thought we had killed the last of you…"

Her words, however bored and to the point they might sound, made no sense. Onyx had just arrived in the city and this was the very first conflict with one of the four up to date.

Cal ignored her and continued even though his throat felt dry and his mind was racing to find a way out. "You are wanted for terrorism, robbery, kidnapping and wild vandalism. Your former teammates are also wanted for murder, homicide and…" he hesitated for the last one. "One case of sexual assault."

She sighed again and her eyes locked directly with his, as if they simply ignored the visor that was stuck between them. Her gaze held hidden, deadly intent and he was certain that she would attempt to kill him in the next few seconds. Luckily, she was not the one suspected for sexual assault, but that was probably the least of his worries. He had at least ten meters of distance between him and her, but that wasn't enough to safeguard him.

"You a cop?" She asked him and casually readied her Multi-Action Dust Rapier. "Crack shot. Marksman?"

He didn't answer her and realized that, in order to fight her, he would have to insert the ShockRounds instead of the normal, Armour-Piercing rounds. He estimated the chance of actually scoring a hit at approximately two percent, but he still couldn't risk a stray shit killing her. Onyx wanted her alive so his ass was toasted.

The moment he pressed the button on the side of his rifle and popped the magazine, Permafrost struck at him. Her Rapier flashed through the air and red runes appeared alongside the blade, indicating a Dust-based attack.

The soldier cursed under his breath and jumped to the side, dodging the white-hot torrent of fire that had been summoned out of freaking nowhere. The building behind him exploded into flames as the attack impacted on it and he was pelted by fragments and shards of glass.

He desperately clawed for the ShockRounds attached to his suit and injected them into his rifle, but at that point Permafrost had already cycled her weapon and lunged towards him, crossing the distance between the two of them within two seconds. She attempted to spear him on her rapier and she damn near succeeded too; only because he side-stepped and slammed the butt of his rifle down on her weapon was he able to survive the attack.

The girl then spun her blade around again and with a simple flicker of her wrist, she send him sprawling to the ground. He wasn't bleeding; his armour had saved him from what had to have been an otherwise lethal stab.

But she wasn't done yet. Just as the soldier rolled over his shoulder and jumped up to fire at her, she sent a flare of light-blue Dust through her rapier and sent a wave of ice speeding towards him.

His sizzling shots impacted fruitlessly on the ice and it in turn impacted less fruitlessly on him, blasting him several meters backwards and somehow binding his wrists together. His rifle clattered to the ground, discharged once more and then fell silent.

Cal barely had time to exhale in surprise before Permafrost jumped towards him, delivering a powerful downwards kick to his head and sending him crashing into the ground.

No respite. She channeled a blue glyph underneath him and his eyes widened when he realized what she was going for. But his hands were tied together and he could only watch in horror as it launched him into the air, rendering him vulnerable for the next attack.

The former Heiress stabbed at him when he came falling down again and he understood that this time, she was going for the kill-move. The shimmering point of her sword tore through the air and time seemed to slow down as it approached his chest, heading straight for his heart.

He didn't want to die yet. He had a duty to do; his very purpose in life had yet to be lived out. He couldn't die there…he would leave a mess behind. Not yet…too soon.

The soldier brought his ice-bound wrists up and forced his armour plated hand towards the rapier as it was about to skewer him mid-air. The very second that he made contact with the point, he pulled it to the side.

But he wasn't fast enough and even as he forced the rapier more to the right of his chest, away from his heart, the point sank deep into his armour and penetrated his flesh with ease. He cried out as the weapon penetrated his hand completely and proceeded deep into his chest, tearing through the composite armour like it was wet paper and embedding itself in his flesh. The point pinged off his ribs and he inhaled sharply as an all-consuming jolt of rain racked his body. Spots of light exploded in front of his vision and the air grew stale and cold.

Permafrost pulled her weapon out with one swift movement and then spun around, slashing at him one more time and sending him crashing into the wall of the building she had set on fire. He could hear the panicked cries of trapped civilians, but there was nothing that he could do to save them. His chest had to be ruined, as he was having difficulty breathing. The bitch had taken him out in a fight that lasted only a few seconds; for all his training and skills, he had been unable to counter her attacks. Was she mad at him for having shot her companions? Or could she care less for them, like the sociopath that some people thought she was?

He took a ragged breath and with trembling hands, reached for the puncture on his suit. Blood was oozing out of the wounds in both his chest and his hand and if he didn't stop the bleeding quick, he would either bleed to death or choke on his own blood.

Goddamn he hurt…his chest felt like it had been split apart and his hand was burning and itching like crazy. He had been stabbed by blades before but…damn.

Footsteps approached him and he slowly raised his head, watching as Weiss Schnee approached him with calm steps, her face betraying no emotions. The red stripes of blood on her clothes were standing out frighteningly from the rest of her outfit. What had happened to the self-aware girl? Why was a girl, barely eighteen years old, not only capable of killing him but also willing to?

He coughed and red droplets of blood hit the inside of his helmet. One of his lungs had been punctured…he was going to choke on his blood after all.

The girl looked at the burning house and then her gaze went downwards, stopping at his prone form. The wild fire was reflected in her eyes, but she was only interested in watching him squirm. Normally, he wouldn't allow such a foe any satisfaction in the victory, but he had no choice now. Through the pain and spastic muscles, he had no choice but to clumsily reach for his chestplate.

"Persistent…" she muttered and knelt down next to him, watching him with her cold eyes. "You are not with the VPD. Who are you? Who sent you?"

He wanted to tell her where she could stick her rapier, but she was still a lady. A crazy, murderous terrorist for a lady, but still a lady. And he was still a man. A teenage, socially incapable soldier for a man, but still a man. He had manners…and he wanted to refrain from pissing off the mean lady.

He coughed again and when he tried to take a deep breath, the only thing that came out was a pained wheeze. So much for replying. Was he dying?

Permafrost got to her feet again. "It seems I have hit your lungs. I aimed for your heart. You should bleed out very soon now…anything you want to say?"

At least that wasn't the clichéd 'any last words' phrase that many cocky foes that spouted throughout the years. And the fact that she sounded serene and composed when speaking made him believe that she had genuinely wanted to kill him without pain. But why was she interested in his last words?

He coughed again and this time, he couldn't stop. More and more blood stuck to the inside of his helmet and the sides of his vision blurred when the flaring pain in his chest intensified again. His hand was throbbing, but that wasn't the worst of it.

The camera…the camera was still recording. It was recording everything that had happened and even now, the people from Onyx were seeing live what was happening to him. Perhaps he could draw out one final piece of information?

Cal slowly fumbled around on his chest and pulled a cylindrical object out of a tightly-secured pocket, feeling if it was ready to be used.

The white-haired girl watched him mess around with the one thing that might prolong his mission and made no attempt to stop him. She had obviously only dealt with the Police at this point…perhaps a normal soldier or two. But she had never met with Onyx troopers and she was about to understand just why they too were called the best-of-the-best.

His fingers stumbled upon the pointed protrusion at the top of the ten-inch tall cylinder and he inserted the tip of the object into the round puncture in his chest, pressing it deep into his ruined flesh until that too hit a bone.

A new shockwave of pain jolted through his body and he inhaled sharply, the blurring around his eyes fading slightly as the pain woke him up somewhat. Gathering his remaining strength, he pressed the trigger hidden at the top of the small canister and inserted a thick fluid into his chest, which chilled him to his very core. The antibacterial, tissue-regenerative foam filled the space in his chest and plugged the hole in his lung, preventing the organ from being damaged further.

The trooper took a deep, ragged breath and pulled his knees up to his chest, testing his newly-repaired muscles. Then he kicked them out again and used that momentum to fling himself back to his feet, where he instantly assumed a martial arts position. The bio-foam felt like a thousand tiny knives stabbing his flesh from the inside, but at the very least he understood that it was doing good to his body. And that was all that he needed to start a round two.

The white fluid leaked through the wound to the outside, where it immediately hardened and formed a small layer on top of his armoured plates.

At that point, his allies should have arrived. Where were they? He had trapped civvies in a burning building and a ticking bomb about to blow the hell out of a Schnee Dust Company building.

Permafrost jumped back the second he got to his feet again and readied her rapier for her own round two.

"Monarch, t-this is Two-One. I need b-back-up ASAP!" He coughed at the communicator, praying that there was an Operative around to counter this level S threat.

"_Copy that Lima Two-One, field Agents are en-route to your location. ETA one minute. Make it count!"_

He smiled bitterly. Now he just had to keep Weiss Schnee busy for one minute, during which his team could arrive to save his sorry ass. His helmet would muffle his every word unless he wanted to be heard. She didn't know about his reinforcements.

Permafrost grabbed a small electronic device out of some pocket and opened it, revealing a very high-end Scroll.

"You are new," she muttered at him. A sense of arrogance was trickling into her voice. "That's good. In one minute, the bomb will go off and destroy the warehouse. In the same minute, the family inside of that building will burn to death. Take your pick. "

He was starting to get pissed. People could be burning to death right now and she was playing games? What sick bastard had thought of that? Not Permafrost herself, as she had just plucked her Scroll from some cavity to read a message. Someone else had given her those instructions…or at least he hoped so. If the ex-Heiress had gotten so twisted that she could think of that herself, she was beyond redeeming.

With one quick movement, he pulled out his sidearm –filled with the same Armour-Piercing rounds- and opened fire on the bitch, aiming to cap her in the legs so that she wouldn't move as fast when the team came to bring her in. Normally, he wouldn't have risked shooting a target like her with lethals, but things had changed probably around the time she had stabbed him and left a family to burn.

Even though his sight was uneven at best, he still managed to pull the trigger a few times. But Permafrost merely turned her sword towards him and summoned a glyph in the air, blocking all of his rounds save one, which managed to penetrate the strange white symbol and sail past her head harmlessly.

She smiled smugly –a gesture that almost looked alien in appearance- and then launched herself in the air with another one of her Dust-powered abilities, faster than he could follow her with his pistol. Before the soldier knew it, his target had disappeared over the roof of a nearby building, leaving him alone with a ticking bomb and a burning house.

"_Be advised, friendlies on your six!" _a voice yelled in his ear and it took Cal a few seconds to realize that the voice belonged to Monarch, his communicative officer. Friendlies were coming up on his six…that was…that was behind him, right?

He turned around sluggishly, very aware of the fact that the numbing in his chest wasn't a hundred percent because of the sealing biofoam. In the cover of the night, traversing the rooftops with relative ease, were five soldiers that he could only identify because of the visor-identification that his helmet provided for him. Three of them were the rest of Fireteam Lima, while two of them were unidentified Field Agents. Ranking higher than normal soldiers, the Field Agents that Onyx employed were cleared higher than most troopers. They shared just about as much security clearance as low-ranked officers and any time one of them showed up, they would take command of the present troopers to partake on some classified operation.

Cal could work with them. They weren't as bad as the Operatives were and the few Field Agents that he knew personally were pretty much ok. But they were heavily specialized and their appearance usually meant that things had gotten a bit serious. But seeing as he had just been nailed by Permafrost herself, things already were serious.

He just hoped that one of them knew their bombs.

The two Field Agents jumped off the roof, landed on the ground, rolled over their shoulder and sprinted towards the Schnee warehouse faster than any Police officer or normal soldier could.

So they had picked the bomb above the trapped family? Figures…

"Cal!" Lima Two-Four snapped at him as she too jumped off the roof, closely followed by Two-Two and Two-Three. "Situation report?"

"We got a family in that burning house!" He cried out and pointed at the building in question, where flames were currently licking at the roof. "Get to it!"

He would have charged off into the flames himself, were it not for his wound. He had been nailed hard enough for his normal prowess to have been reduced severely; he was incapable of performing the normal superhuman feats that were required to rescue those civvies. Their only hope now was the rest of Fireteam Lima.

Two-Three was the first one who moved; as soon as he heard the word 'family' he had turned around and sprinted off towards the burning house, ramming his shoulder into the door and breaking it off its hinges without any trouble. Even though Lima Two-Three wasn't exactly the strongest of their team, the kid was the one with the biggest motivation of saving people. Not that the rest of them weren't motivated, but Three was the one who was the very first to do so. As such, before Four and Two even realized what was going on, Three had already breached the burning house.

Cal breathed in sharply and a lance of pain shot through his hand. He had forgotten that Permafrost had punctured a hole clean through his right hand. The entire situation was messed up and the worst thing was that he didn't even know what it was. Sixteen months ago Onyx had last been to Vale, inspecting the city's affairs to see if everything was still alright.

It hadn't been very good. Anarchy had been reigning in the city and the Vale Police Department had been unable to handle all the crime, terrorism and other corruption that had been tainting the city. Beacon had been abandoned…even before the would-be students could have started the year. As such, all the people that were capable of stopping the anarchy were unavailable. The list of Beacon-attendees had still been in Onyx' hands of course, so they had searched the city for those people that had been about to attend the prestigious combat school.

So many civilians had died…and Onyx had found no more than a handful of people that had been affiliated with the former Beacon Academy. Their Hunter-Killer teams had then banded together with the Operatives and purged the city from all major gang-leaders, crime-syndicates and corrupted politicians. With the head of the corruption cleanly cut off, Onyx had then taken the traumatized and orphaned students and taken them with them, leaving the city to recover from its damage.

But now, a mere day after having returned, the situation was worse than ever. Onyx still had that list of would-be attendees and four names were standing out at the very top, encircled with red. Permafrost was Weiss Schnee, the Heiress to the Schnee Dust Company. Onyx knew of her and a few others that weren't supposed to be on the enemy's side; they were supposed to the good guys, keeping the roaming gangs and criminals in check. Yet here she had been…ready to blow up one of her own family's buildings while setting an occupied house in fire. And the rest of the students were, according to witnesses and information-brokers, equally corrupted. But they had only met Permafrost that night and the rest of the "students" at the list were just large unknowns.

Cal turned his attention to the two Field Agents that were working on the bomb. By his count, it should have either gone off already, or it should be about to. If that Schnee building blew up, entire boatloads of Dust wouldn't be transported to the War-zones where they were needed and humanity would be pushed back again by the never-ending hordes of Grimm. These two had better know what they were doing…

The windows behind him exploded and he snapped his side-arm up to engage whatever was going on, purely by instinct. But there were no criminals; no corrupted and psychopathic teenagers. Just the rest of his Fireteam, exiting the building via less conventional means. Two-Two was carrying two unconscious children, Two-Three had an unmoving man on his shoulders and Two-Four was carrying an unconscious woman in her arms. All three of them had jumped out of the windows and all three of them had landed on the ground without buckling or falling. Carrying an average of seventy-five to eighty kilograms on your back while jumping out of a two-story building wasn't something that you were capable of doing on a daily basis…unless you were an Onyx trooper.

Aura went a long way concerning protection and shielding.

"She's not breathing!" Two-Two told Two-Four when he looked down at her civilian.

"No shit!" She snapped at him and started resuscitating the unconscious woman.

"Kids are fine," Three called out.

"This guy will live, he's breathing steadily," Two then added, confirming the well-being of the family caught in the blaze.

"Good work," he breathed out and sat down on the stone street, ice still clinging to his suit. By now the bomb should have detonated already, so the two Field Agents had managed to prevent it from going off. Good…one less problem to think about.

"What the hell happened here Cal?" Two-Four asked him. Overhead, one of Onyx' dropships was approaching their position. It must have been the ship that had transported the two Agents to his location…but that didn't matter. He was thankful to have a place where he could recover. "You were supposed to gather Intel, not set the neighborhood on fire!"

"You're speaking to the teamleader," Two-Three mumbled, but Two-Two punched him in his side and silenced him.

"Yeah, about that," he started to explain and walked towards the dropship while it was touching down next to the warehouse. "Permafrost was there. She had two White Fang members with her and she knew that I was there."

"And then she kicked your ass," Two-Two chuckled as he marched towards the now-defused bomb.

Cal ignored that and entered the dropship, grabbing his chest and groaning in frustration. And pain. Two-Four walked in after him and took her helmet off, letting her long purple hair flow freely in the wind. It was still raining and droplets of water were already clinging to her hair as she sat down next to him. The burning building could be handled by other people. They had to get out fast.

"Let me see," she said and reached for his chest. "What happened?"

"Rapier, puncture," he hissed through his teeth as her probing fingers hit a particularly sore spot. Then he opened his fist and showed her the hole that had been punched clean through it. "She got me good."

"Guys," Two-Two's voice sounded from outside the ship, "the bomb is defused and packed. We can go now."

"Good," he muttered as Two-Three entered the dropship too. The two Field Agents were the last ones to enter the ship, dragging the oversized bomb with them.

"Shit this thing is heavy," the one with the brown armour laughed. She was wearing a helmet with a visor that consisted out of two, glowing eyeholes that looked eerily red in the night. He recognized her armour as that of a Demolitions Expert; someone who excelled at not getting killed while tinkering with bombs. She had been one of the initial teens saved by Onyx. Her armour-plating configuration was adjusted to reduce potential of dismemberment during explosive handling, should things go wrong during her activities. She was wearing a three-foot long, red device on her back.

"At least you got a new toy," the other Agent joked, her voice sounding feminine too. These two sounded too cheerful and outgoing to be experienced Field Agents…both of them had to be part of the would-be students that were going to Beacon. Extraordinarily skilled, but undisciplined and still green.

And they were cleared higher than Fireteam Lima was.

"Soldier," the Demolitions Expert then said with a somewhat more serious tone, "report. What did you see?"

Cal had just taken some painkillers and regenerative fluids to help deal with the wound and when he got back to the Forward Firebase, Onyx would debrief him too. He had no desire to tell the story all over again…but he had little choice. Field Agents were more valuable than troopers were. "It was Permafrost. She had two White Fang members by her side and she was fixing a bomb when I approached. She knew I was there and called me out –I shot her companions and she set fire to the building."

"And then?" The other Agent urged him. She was also wearing her weapon on her back, but her weapon was easier to identify than her partner's. It looked like an underhanded grenade launcher with a large, curving blade at the other end. Cal had seen Operative Blackwood wielding the same sort of weapon one time, but seeing as he was Blackwood, that version was much bigger. The agent, just like the Demolitions Expert, was wearing the same BDU like the regular troopers. It was the helmet that set the Field Agents apart from the rest of the normal soldiers though and this one was no exception. Her visor was larger in the middle and grew smaller when it approached the sides of her helmet. Her armour was a deep tint of green instead of brown.

"Then, I engaged and lost to Permafrost. She pulled out a scroll, read something and then gave me the choice between saving the family or the Warehouse."

"A choice?" Demolitions Expert asked him with surprise. "Why?"

"No idea," he replied.

"What would you have picked?" Two-Four softly asked him.

He turned to face her. She had just donned her helmet again and he couldn't gauge her thoughts. "What?"

"Would you have let the bomb go off?" she reformulated her question.

The soldier scowled when he gave his reply. "Of course. I'm no Operative."

"No Operative? What does that mean?" The green-armoured girl then asked.

Two-Two looked at her and the surprise was evident in his voice. "What? A Field Agent that doesn't know about the Operatives?"

"Yeah, all this secret and silent 'classified' bullshit annoys me, so I only read what I need to," the girl replied sharply. Normally, Lima-Two-Two would have started a fight if someone talked to him like that. The Field Agent's rank and position prevented that from happening though.

"I know that Operatives are chosen to deal with the most extreme risks, but that's about it," the brown-haired girl added. It seemed like she was the more reasonable of the two.

"That's the gist of it," Two-Four replied. "There are three we know of…and all three of them are the types that would let the family burn to death in order to save the warehouse."

"What?" the green-coloured Agent replied with shock and repulsion. "Why?"

"Logistics," Cal grimly replied. "Four lives to potentially hundreds. They make those choices every day and that makes them…hard to work with."

Funny how these kids didn't know anything about Onyx' affairs, while they were cleared higher than those that did.

But he wasn't angry. He didn't have time to be angry. With a hole in his hand and a hole in his chest, he had better things to worry about than two kids running around with a high security clearance that they didn't use. Their professionalism was their own business; if they wanted to be immature children, that was all up to them. As long as they did the job that they were supposed to be doing, things were alright.

The rest of the journey back to the headquarters was spent in silence. The interiors of their large dropship had plenty of space for at least twenty persons, but no windows. Windows were structural weaknesses and the soldiers that were moved around in the ships had other things on their head than a killer-view. The appearance of two Field Agents at once during the same encounter with Permafrost couldn't be a coincidence though. He was sure that certain that there was something else going on…something more important than people let on.

No matter. He would be debriefed and then he would find out the truth.

The dropship lurched downwards and he had to fasten his seat before he got thrown across the cargo-bay. The trip was at an end it was time for the least favorite part of a mission: the debriefing.

First, he and his team got split up into different cells, where they all had to strip and take off their armour and don the standard military fatigues. Then they had to rejoin with the two Field Agents –both of whom had also dressed formally- and wait in a fancy waiting room, adjacent to a room that could best be described as a theater hall. There was a stage and there were people watching. The only difference was that, while you had to practice the specific words you were going to use, the vast majority of the things you were going to say were decided by the people that were watching you.

The two Field Agents were sitting down in the chairs and the rest of his team quickly took their position on a large sofa.

But just as Cal was about to sit down, the Public Announcement system called his name and he understood that he was the first one to be questioned.

Great.

The soldier marched past his teammates, who threw him reassuring glances. Well, apart from Two-Three, who was a bit oblivious to the situation.

He walked through the door and entered the room that reminded him oh so much of ancient amphitheaters where onlookers could yell at struggling warriors. When he was on the podium, he saw that there were at least four high-intensity lights aimed at him, Behind those lights sat the important officers and military personnel that were going to debrief him. Even with his sensitive eyes, he could not discern who were sitting there.

Cal briefly wondered if Monarch was there too before a loud voice started talking. "You are Lima Two-One, leader of Fireteam Lima in Vale, correct?"

The voice sounded a bit booming…but he still recognized the man who it belonged ti. Lieutenant "Yale", one of the foremost individuals responsible for securing Vale. The man was an enigma, even to the higher-ups that Cal personally knew. Skilled in combat, but even more skilled in analyzing situations and coming up with plans and long-term strategies.

"Yes sir," he answered.

"You are to answer any and all questions put to you to the best extent possible, deliberately withholding vital information is will result in a court-martial or execution. Are you aware of this?"

Court-martial and execution unless he was a Field Agent, or an Operative, or any other important person. "Yes sir."

"Then we shall proceed. Tonight, you encountered someone from the list. Can you elaborate on her identity?"

"Yes sir. Weiss Schnee, code-named Permafrost and ex-Heiress to the Schnee family business."

"Where was she?"

"In front of one of the empty warehouses, near the docks."

"What was she doing there?"

"Working with two White Fang members on installing a bomb, sir."

The voices started whispering at each other and from the looks of it, not everyone agreed with each other. "Why do you suppose she was working with the White Fang?" Yale asked for his opinion.

"Sir, she was wearing the family crest with a large cross over it. Either the family disowned her and she wants revenge, or she separated herself from the family."

Again, the officers started whispering at each other. "How did the engagement go?"

"She knew I was there, so I came out and shot her allies. Then I engaged the target primary and lost in the subsequent battle. During our fight, she set a house on fire. She pulled out a high-tech scroll, read something and gave me the choice of saving the warehouse or the burning house…it had a family in it."

"What did you do then?" the voice asked.

"Sir, my team arrived just in time. They took care of the civilians, while two Field Agents took care of the bomb."

"Yes, Agent Adamant and Agent Auburn."

So those were the two girls that had saved the warehouse? Interesting. He didn't know the name Auburn, but Adamant was quite known.

"Yes sir. They disarmed the bomb and took it with them."

"Anything else, Lima Two-Three? Anything you want to share? Your own opinion"

Cal was done now. He could be quiet and walk away without any consequences… but he couldn't shake the image of Weiss allowing a family to burn out of his head. She couldn't be the only one, as Onyx had four High-Priority targets. There were three other girls like her and if her abilities were any indication, the city was in some major danger.

"Yes sir. Something big must have happened for Permafrost to have fallen so deeply. She can't be much older than eighteen at this point, sir."

"Neither are you, Lima Two-Three. And you have a body-count. People can be killers. You are dismissed. And remember: any and all information handled in this room is to be treated as classified."

He nodded and left the podium, black spots jumping into his eyes the moment they broke contact with the intense lights. That went easier than expected.

Cal opened the door, allowed the next soldier to enter the podium and sat down in a chair when the door closed behind him.

Weiss Schnee…Permafrost…terrorist against the Schnee family. Who else was on that list? Not their code-names, but their actual names? Which would-be students had snapped and descended so deeply into corruption?

~0~

"_Onyx has multiple people working in the field. All of them are outfitted with the standard 'soldier' BDU, but their helmet identifies them according to their task and specification. Fireteam Lima are classified as 'troopers' and hold the lowest rank and security clearing. Auburn and Adamant are Field Agents and are specialized warriors with a specific task, holding moderate security clearance and follow orders only from veteran officers. The Operatives have the highest security clearance and answer directly to Yale, General Randall or the Themeluesi himself."_

Onyx ranking system, part 1

~0~

_Let me know what you think! Leave a review, favorite or follow. See you next time!_


	2. Pariah

_Wow, so much positive response! I hadn't really expected this, to be honest._

_**Skire: **__thanks._

_**Coolheadluke: **__nice. Hope you enjoy my other stories._

_**Anonymous: **__well, seeing as 9000 is my average chapter size, I do hope that your brain won't take too long to adjust :p_

_**IAmAnonReviewer: **__of course the other cast will be there. The thing is that I don't want to reveal everyone's new life right in the beginning, as that would be a waste of said premise. And…well, boring._

_**Nightraze: **__thanks for the reviews! Rest assured, I won't be placing my other stories on hold. I am glad to see that you enjoyed Onyx' reappearance._

_**Scourge From Bloodclan: **__Oh believe me, I can't wait either._

_**Leez: **__you're right. But as stated before, I won't be revealing everyone right of at the start. However, I will maintain a healthy focus on both RWBY and the OC"s, because both roles are equally important. _

~0~

"_Onyx activities in Vale date back to as far as three years ago. Vale was unstable back then, but still intact. The Vale Police Department could handle the steadily decreasing amount of criminals, there was no army anywhere near the city and people liked their government. But sixteen months ago, something had destabilized the entire city. Coated the damn place in utter anarchy; Beacon was burning and nobody could handle the chaos."_

_A brief history of the Fall of the Four, pt. 1 _

~0~

Permafrost, they had called her. Weiss Schnee, Permafrost. It was a curious name…and a fitting one at that. Of course the situation had been…less fitting. She had really hoped to simply be able to detonate the explosive without any witnesses in the area. The two White Fang troopers lent to her by a friend had been…expendable…so she wouldn't have worried about them. The sudden appearance of that strangely clad soldier though? That was not really within her plans. Within _their _plans. But she was anything if not creative and her superior skills had allowed her to easily catch the guy snooping on them. His aim had been better than she had imagined though and the two troopers had died before they had hit the ground, spraying red all over her skirt.

Not that she disliked the colour red. On the contrary; she liked the color. Lovely red. It was just inconvenient to have been splattered with body fluids so early in the evening. Of course she had been planning on a little mischief, but that had changed together with the change of plans. Naturally, she could still have some fun…

Weiss stared at the busy road in the distance, right above a row of pretty looking buildings. Half a dozen cars raced in and out of her field of vision every minute, which was probably impressive for the current time. It was roughly twelve o'clock in the evening and she _should _be returning to her "lair" as people called it. It would be so easy to spread a little bit more chaos though…It was basically why she had headed downtown with a big bomb. But it wasn't her _style. _She wasn't the one to spread carnage and chaos just for the heck of it…she left that to her companions.

No. She wouldn't attract any new attention just yet. It was bad enough that she had been stopped in the middle of her Operation by people that seemed to know their stuff way better than the Vale Police Department and it would just be bad for her reputation if that were to happen twice in a row. Not that they would be able to stop her a second time…them showing up would be bad in itself.

Her long, white hair was flowing loosely in the wind and she felt the brief urge to take her hair ornament out; to allow her hair to wave with the wind, flowing completely free. But as soon as that urge came, she suppressed it and lowered her gaze. She didn't need elaborate schemes and acts to be free anymore; she was free. She was loose. And nothing would stop her now.

While Weiss casually made her way to the least busy part of town, leaving a freezing path in her wake, she directed her gaze and thoughts to her direct environment. The city of Vale was in anarchy; the only remaining official organization was the VPD; the police forces who had banded together and taken in any and all civilians who were willing to fight for their homes. They were all pitiful. There weren't many powerful fighters with them and the main bulk of their forces just died whenever they clashed with stronger enemies. And the VPD only held a small territory in Vale, somewhere between one-sixth and one-seventh of the city. The rest was ruled by street-thugs, gangs and crime lords. And the four of them, of course. Not everybody was aware of the current order of things though. She was, for all intents of purposes, a beautiful girl to look at. And many of the males walking around on the street didn't know who she was…and acted as such.

As if destiny was eager to prove her right, a group of four hooded and armed people was making their way towards her as she walked past the street. They didn't seem to notice the freezing alley that she had just left and they were all too focused on her appearance. The group looked filthy; all of them were wearing improvised weapons, caps and hoodies and one of them was large and fat. Two started to yell at her and another one was chuckling with a deep, raspy voice.

They were begging to be killed.

Weiss wasn't a sadistic person, despite what the people on the street that did know her were whispering about her. She disliked needless bloodshed and pain if she could avoid it. Collateral damage was unavoidable though and she had killed her fair share of people when the four of them had risen up against those that were oppressing them. Death was unavoidable and inevitable and a good way of solving problems…but she wanted to avoid messy kills as much as possible, not only for her own preferences but also for her own appearance.

Blood was so hard to scrub out.

"Hey babe!" one of the hooded idiots yelled at her, like some eager swine screaming at a potential partner.

"Come join us!" his partner added and the other two burst into laughing. They were directly moving to intercept her path and within six seconds, they would be on her. Two of them were wearing chains, one of them had a long, rusty knife and the fat bastard had a wooden club with spikes sticking out of it.

_People really do that? Sticking spikes on a bat?_

She waited until the group was close enough for the lead one to reach out for her and then pulled her Myrtenaster faster than any of them could follow. There would be no warning; no threats to make them go away. She would simply have to call her name to chase them off but…people like these, groping and reaching for any girl that came within her reach? It pissed her off.

So they would die too.

Within half a second after pulling her white rapier out of its holster, she grabbed the man by his shoulder and speared him right through his heart, killing him stone-dead. No suffering, no pain.

No mercy.

The man uttered a quick, guttural growl and then went limp in her grasp. Weiss then took her hand off of his shoulder and spun around his right side, gaining more distance between herself and the three remaining thugs. They seemed to realize that something was wrong, but they were too slow. Way too slow.

She lunged forwards with her weapon, using her innate Aura and semblance to boost her synergy and launch her forwards faster than any normal human could. Before the fat man had any clue as to what had taken his buddy out, she impacted on him and shattered his ribcage with a particularly powerful stab of her rapier. His bones shattered and her sword sank deep into his chest, cleaving right through bone and flesh and other tissues without any difficulty at all. There was no difference in resistance between the guy and the male soldier she had pierced in the same manner. Well, a subtle one. This man wasn't armoured…and didn't survive longer than a second after having been stabbed like that.

Weiss placed her foot at his stomach and tore her weapon free, causing spurts of blood to explode from his body. Even though she then jumped backwards to avoid the gore from landing on her white skirt, she still couldn't avoid being splattered with the stuff.

God she hated it when that happened.

The first guy fell to the ground and the remaining two started to scream and babble incoherently, readying their weapons but making no visible choice between falling back and attacking. Silly thugs; a drawn weapon demanded blood and a drawn weapon against _her _demanded death.

She channeled the Dust within her weapon and activated its white function. The cold steel grew even colder in her grasp and the ground underneath her started cake itself in a thin layer of ice. That was good; it should serve to increase her intimidation factor. She had plans for a certain one of these two…but which one?

She looked back and forth between the two remaining males and assessed their features, traits and appearance within two seconds. The first one was younger, handsomer and portably had an entire future ahead of him. The second one was ugly, old and probably had wasted his life on meaningless things already.

Weiss lashed out and covered the second one in ice, leaving only his head sticking to enable him to breathe. The first one…wasn't as lucky. She covered him completely, from the tips of his toes to his silly hood. The lack of air to his brains would make sure that he suffocated within three to seven minutes, with permanent brain-damage setting in after the minimal three minutes. Even if the strange soldiers or lucky policemen could get to him within the next few minutes, he would be a goner either way.

"Sorry," she smiled at him and leaned against the utterly frozen form, pressing her body against the cold ice. It felt good on her skin; it eased the slight disturbance in her head that the combat had brought up and also served to take some of the blood of her clothes away. "You're not my type…"

Then the ex-Heiress turned to face the last remaining thug. Or the last living thug…which was probably the same either way. "Do you know who I am?" she asked him, her voice as calm and collected as her demeanor was. There would be no getting close to him; she had better things to press herself against.

Her skin flushed when she thought of that and before she could stop herself, a small smile played over her lips. It had to have had some effect on her prisoner, as he started groaning and struggling with newfound energy. Not that it helped him.

"I-I-I-" he muttered, but she stepped closer to him and pointed her rapier at his face. She hated needless bloodshed and killing, sure. But most kills that she and her companions made could be defined as either necessary or justified…and if she wanted someone to do something, bloodshed was never needless.

She penetrated the skin right underneath his temple with her point of her rapier and slowly slid down to his chin, leaving a thin and bloody trail on the side of his face. Some girls found scars to be attractive…and she already knew of one girl that shared that stereotypical thought. Well, two girls actually.

They were closely related.

"Do you?" she asked him, not changing her calm voice one bit.

"I-you are W-Weiss Schnee…Heiress-"

She inserted the tip of her weapon deeper into his wound, electing a brief cry of pain from the trapped thug. "Ex. Heiress." She slowly whispered at him, putting extra accent on the 'ex'.

"Y-yes! E-ex! Please, don't kill me!"

Of course she wouldn't kill him; she needed someone to spread the tale about her, didn't she? She needed to have people show the necessary respect towards her. Getting attacked and then dirtied right on the streets was just insulting.

"Good man. If someone hears you screaming…screaming in panic for your life…tell them that you tried to attack Weiss Schnee. Tell them that soon, we will be clearing the streets. Yes?"

"Y-yes!" The man was quick to please. It showed a lot about his true person; about the way he truly was. Her partner had taught her so many things about the human nature…about the way people thought and worked. A man's true nature had only a few ways of surfacing; after consuming large amounts of alcohol, right before death and in the face of death. This man had just proven himself to be a coward and a bootlicker. She should have gauged his eyes out but…that would have left him in no condition to spread the word about her and her actions.

She withdrew her weapon, wiped it off on some nearby body and then placed it back in its holster, which was really just a white strap by her side that allowed her sword to dangle by her leg. Now…these men had died so incredibly easy. They were nothing compared to the man whose life she had almost taken a few hours back. She hadn't heard the bomb go off, so the soldier had left the family to burn to death to save some stupid warehouse. It spoke volumes about him too…now she would have to hunt him down and make him suffer.

His appearance was a problem though; a problem that only one person could know how to deal with.

Weiss continued to make her way to the nearest hideout, stopping for nothing along the way. Nobody bothered her anymore and nothing important was going on, so it didn't take her very long to actually reach the place. Her partner should be there by all rights and Weiss was just itching to see the girl again. It had been roughly two days since she had actually met her in flesh…in more ways than one.

So it came as a surprise to her to find the hideout empty. The fancy, two-story building was completely devoid of other people and that was…sort of worrying. It could mean a few different things and one of those things was that the army –stationed just outside of Kingdom- had finally decided to take action and made a covert operation to break into their safehouse. But there was no sign of struggling, no evidence of a fight and no dead bodies. If her partner had been using this place, she wasn't anymore.

It was curious though. Nobody had fought around the place, yet it was completely empty.

A realization came to Weiss' mind and she frowned. Could it be that they had received an anonymous tip from someone that the VPD or the army was going to breach their safehouse? But she had received a message just a while back, how could that have been orchestrated in the span of one hour? And why hadn't she been warned?

_Impossible...they would have warned me._

No, that wasn't the case. They hadn't forgotten about her. Something else was going on…a change of plans? Perhaps…

Weiss delved deeper into the house, searching for clues as to what might have happened. She had been really looking forward to a…team-up. The thought alone made her blush, but she was all alone in the building. What use was that?

A nearby laptop gained her attention by resting very open and active near a couch, waiting for someone to peek at its screen.

She smiled and made her way to the electronic device. Scrolls were the most high-end pieces of technology around Vale and with one such a contraption you could do almost a hundred different things. The thing was that theirs was specifically tailored to their activities; the scrolls were designed for combat-durability and stealth. Using them in the field was acceptable, but in the relative safety of their hideout it was a bit unnecessary.

The white-haired girl settled next to the laptop and then took it on her lap, clicking on the only tab that held her name. A message appeared on the screen, obviously written by her partner.

"_Hello Weiss._

_I take it that you have greeted our guests? Our lovely ally has gathered some interesting information on them. I know that you were simply supposed to bomb the Warehouse, but I took the opportunity to make something more out of it. I know, I should have warned you. But don't worry my love; I will make it up to you. You just wait. _

_But for now: I would like you to meet up with said lovely ally and discuss the new options. _

_Love,_

_LRH_

The Dust-mistress smiled at that little message. It was obvious who had sent it; LRRH stood for Little Red Hood. Now then…she was supposed to meet their ally? But there hadn't been any mention of coordinates or time…unless…?

She clicked the message away and the brief change of the screen caused a figure to appear, just for half a second. It was a reflection.

Weiss shifted her hips to the right and then back to the left, penetrating the couch with the rapier that was still attached to her belt and stopping after she had inserted two feet worth of blade. It was just enough to point the edge of her weapon right at the belly of the person that had appeared so sneakily behind her, betrayed only by a brief reflection in the laptop that could only be seen by changing the appearance of the screen. It was professional, clever and nearly enough to fool her. It meant that this wasn't an enemy, although their true relationship was left…ambiguous.

"Hello Blake," she greeted their lovely ally. Her eyes were yellow, moderately slitted and completely devoid of any sympathy for anyone. The dark mascara didn't really make it much better to look at. Enticing, sure. But it made her look as relentless and dark as she was.

"Weiss," the person standing behind her courteously replied. "Your weapon is stuck."

"No it isn't," she smiled and stood, letting the thin sword slide effortlessly out of the thick fabric. She knew what Blake was doing; the Faunus-girl was saying that, had this been a fight, Weiss would have lost. But she wouldn't have, as her sword would have pierced the girl's stomach or, failing that, be pulled out of the couch with relative ease. No, had this been a fight it would have been far from one-sided.

"I take I that you are here to give me some information?" she asked the raven-haired girl.

"It seems so," Blake replied, still with her polite and collected voice. She was a curious case, that little Blake. She had been there from the beginning, just like the other two. When everything had gone to hell in Vale, she had been an important factor in Weiss opening her eyes to the truth; not just about the Schnee Dust Company, but about people in general. Blake was an important figure in the White Fang and it had been her that was responsible for a lot of resources and people under their wing. But her allegiance was questionable at best and the only person she had genuine respect for, was the same person that _he _had genuine respect for.

But as such, Blake was an unknown factor. She despised all humans, no matter how good or wrong they were and it really showed in her attitude towards most people. Not that Weiss really cared for how Blake treated people, but if it was going to affect their partnership it might be a liability.

"The bomb didn't go off," the Faunus said. Her appearance was more…revealing…than Weiss' was. She wore skintight black jeans that ended near her thighs, were they became white. A white bra and a leather jacket that hugged her gracious frame as tight as her pants did were clad around her torso, with the jacket reaching down to her behind. A small collar was wrapped around her neck, made to resemble that of a slave, while her purple ears were freely exposed to the air

"You don't say?" she replied with a smile. Even though she had been waging open warfare against her own family for quite some time now, Blake still didn't trust Weiss. She knew it, they knew it and nobody blamed anybody.

"She tested the new ones," Blake then continued and walked around the sofa, making her way closer to Weiss. Her long, black boots made soft clicking sounds as they touched the wooden floor with each step. "The soldiers that arrived here in Vale."

"So they are soldiers?" she replied. Of course that armoured male hadn't been a policeman, but it was annoying to have it confirmed so blatantly. If the army was going to meddle with Vale's affairs, they were going to have to accelerate their plans.

"In a way. Troopers from the army outside of the Kingdom would have gone for the family that you trapped in their burning house."

Yeah…Weiss wasn't really proud of that. Their deaths were necessary to confirm the true mindset of the new enemy, but nobody should have to burn to death. It was a degrading and gruesome end. "How did you know that?"

Blake smiled. It was a seductive, cruel smile. "Your…partner…has staged more than you know. She knew that the soldiers would be there that night. And I watched it all happen."

_Soldiers? Plural? _"I see. So these aren't regular troops?"

"No," Blake replied and slowly walked to the other side of the couch, moving past Weiss without acknowledging her standing there. "This one went for the bomb and defused it. He left those humans to burn. I like it, but _she_ didn't." In contrast to the sisters –where one of which had found a lover in Weiss and the other one was just having fun in life- Blake didn't have anything that drove her beyond her burning hatred of mankind. She wasn't in love with anyone, she didn't trust anyone and she only cared for her fellow Fauna…and that care was pretty much reserved for those that served the White Fang.

Right. "And now?"

"Now?" Blake repeated and turned around, her yellow eyes alit with amusement. "I get to go after him. She wanted to test their morality and they failed the very first test already."

"But who are they?" Weiss asked, feeling her patience decreasing. Blake was acting so condescending and sneering that it was a bit humiliating. It made her realize what the Faunus' victims would have felt like in their final moments and she did _not _want to relate to people. "Why are they here?"

"That's the funny thing…we don't know. My sources say that the soldier you tested tonight was just one member of a bigger organization…an organization that lies outside of the VPD, outside of the army…and outside of Vale. I spotted a pair of them moving to the police-held district just half an hour ago. Now then…where are my two troopers?"

"Dead," Weiss said without hesitation, savoring the brief look of hurt in Blake's eyes. _Consider that payback. _"The soldier was a tad too accurate."

"All the more reason to pay him a little visit," the girl replied eventually, her expression shifting to mild anger. She looked so cute when she had an emotion covering her face.

"On to other business," Weiss then stated. "Where is she?"

"Oh, she's around. In one of our safehouses south of here. Why?"

"That is none of your business."

"I bet. I think I'll go find my new prey…don't scream too loud, will you?"

Weiss blushed deeply and bit back a sharp retort that would have only hurt Blake in a personal way. The Faunus-girl was relentless in demonstrating her opinion about weakness and personal relationships. She viewed love as an anchor –an unnecessary one. And seeing how the four of them spent their time usually, that love might only make things complicated.

Or so it was in Blake's eyes. The truth was that, while Weiss was indeed in love, it wouldn't interfere with what they had planned for Vale. On the contrary; it served to strengthen their bonds. Only when one fell in love with an outsider did things become complicated.

The ex-Heiress smiled wryly and closed the laptop again. _She_ was the one who decided just how loud the screaming got, not Blake.

And, depending on how much she wanted to make things up, Little Red Hood too.

~0~

Many things happened in the middle of the night. It was the most primal time that a living being could endure; monsters left their dens to hunt, prey saw their refuge in the shelters and most creatures simply hid when faced with the darkness. It was hard to explain, but to Blake Belladonna, the night was a friend. It helped her hide, it helped her fight and it helped her survive. While most creatures allowed themselves to relax and calm when the sun rose, she only thrived when the moon stood in the sky and the stars guided her way.

She was a hunter; a predator. She was that for which the day-dwellers hid and with good reason. The night was her territory and people knew that more than they knew about the rest of the Four. She was the one who made people disappear; she was the one who decided on their judgment and all the lesser beings should realize that.

They were all scurrying around down there, acting all high and mighty. _Humans_ in all their fake glory and false power. The sole race that killed and maimed for fun…at least the Grimm could be excused for being creatures that acted on instinct. They could not help what they did, but humans? They chose their deeds. They chose to hurt each other and they were willingly harming everything around them.

Blake didn't know where to find the soldier that had murdered her two underlings; her brothers and sisters from the White Fang. She had ordered them to assist Weiss Schnee in her mission to destroy the Schnee Dust Warehouse and, in doing so, test the newcomers to Vale. But she had never imagined that one single soldier could have been skilled enough to kill both of them in a single encounter before Weiss even had the change to defend them. Their deaths were wrong…and she would have her revenge for them.

As she jumped over the roofs of various buildings, her thoughts kept traveling back to the activities that had set the events of that night in motion. The armoured soldiers marching through Vale, entering territory that was _theirs_. Two of them had made their way to the VPD, while the other one had moved through the city for at least half an hour, completely unopposed, until he had encountered Weiss. His suit was as dark as her night and his helmet made it impossible to spot his face and see what he looked like. The only reason Blake knew that he was a male, was because of the form of his body. But the soldier had been so aware of his environment…it was completely unlike the other military personnel that she had encountered in the past few months.

There was just something off about him and his fellow-soldiers…were they special ops? It would explain their selfish mindset of choosing a Warehouse above other human lives, even though they were sworn to protect.

But Blake would find out. One way or the other. She would start by sending a message to all of her White Fang troopers scattered throughout the village. She only dealt with the pure race; the Fauna. Mankind was simply a festering parasite, relentlessly draining everything around them. But her underlings didn't have that issue with humans to such a degree; each member had their own contacts within Vale and in turn, those contacts had other contacts. Faunus would eventually contact human and eventually, she would be able to triangulate the position of her new victim.

Blake was naturally against needless violence against Fauna, but her style and weaponry made her kills messy. Thankfully her only targets were the Children of Men; Humanity. They were always acceptable targets, inferior and wrong. A blight on the face of Remnant that needed to be corrected. And the White Fang was going to correct that; one human at a time. And tonight, she would start with some soldiers. What she had seen was troublesome. Weiss had attempted to run the male through with her rapier and she had succeeded in doing so…but it hadn't killed him. The soldier had had the reflexes and skills to deflect an otherwise lethal strike and then stand up after having been puncture through the chest.

It was a feat, she had to admit that. But it didn't do anything to lessen her contempt for him. He was still a human…one who had committed one of the worst crimes. He had killed members of the White Fang. Such a deed could only be paid back by blood…and it left a particularly bitter taste in its wake.

Two years ago, more than twenty White Fang members had been murdered when they had been about to remove one of the worst Factories of the Schnee family out there; a facility that employed and oppressed Fauna; forcing them into cheap labor and paying them less than half of what humans would have been paid. It was an insult that she wouldn't have stood for and the then-leader of the organization had proceeded to send two dozen able-handed Fauna, both male and female, to tear the facility down. But then, at the moment of truth, they had been engaged and quickly slain. The Schnee Company had denied responsibility and eye-witnesses had claimed that only a single person had been responsible, but she knew better. The Company had hired heavily armed and armoured soldiers to murder those troopers and the crime had gone unclaimed to this very day.

So it wasn't a big miracle that the murder of two of her brothers of the White Fang was a personal deed against her own person.

For thirty minutes her contacts worked, gathering information and relaying it directly to her scroll. Soon, she was able to exclude multiple districts from the city of Vale and isolate the soldier's whereabouts to one single district. And she was skilled enough to search a single district on her own.

Like shadows she moved, jumping from the top of the roof of a large hotel without being seen by anyone. Seconds later, she reappeared on the top of a nearby garage, but her feet had barely touched the surface before she was gone again. Constantly moving, never being seen and without noise. That was the way she made her way through the various segments of the city, until at one point she stepped into a dark alley and noticed a distinctive lack of movement.

Her senses allowed her to see in the dark without difficulty and he had trained herself to be able to discern more than a hundred different sounds that a human made when they moved, slept or stood still. She was, in more ways than one, a specialized hunter. A hunter of the night, whose prey was close. So very close.

She rested on top of a roof and noticed a small patch of a white substance on the floor, tainted by blotches of red.

Blake smirked and jumped down, free-falling two stories and rolling only once to lessen the impact. No sound, no impact. Nothing to indicate that she was there and yet she was, inspecting the white stuff that lay on the ground.

She reached out with a gloved hand and ran her index finger over the white goo. She had initially thought that a rape had taken place here, but the substance felt too cold and too tough to be a bodily fluid. She was thankful that it wasn't; it wouldn't be the first time such a scene had taken place and even though most of the victims were human, it was still hard to ignore something like that happening. She always interfered, murdering the offenders and leaving as quickly as she had arrived. It was the sole thing that still connected her to humans, as much as she hated it.

The white substance looked similar to what the soldier had injected himself with back during his fight with Weiss. It wasn't a drug…it was something else. Some kind of sticky, coolant fluid that glued a wound together…was it a stich-replacement?

She didn't really care what it was. The soldier had been weak and this was just another layer of evidence that he had gotten lucky. The patch of blood was more interesting though. The man was still wounded.

The cat-Faunus frowned. It was never fun to chase down prey that she hadn't wounded herself…even though she liked to play with those that deserved their fate –like this soldier did- it took the fun out of the hunt.

Blake then proceeded down the alley, taking confidence in the fact that the blood had been fresh. It wouldn't take her long to reach her target now.

As she ran through the various alleys and abandoned buildings, she remembered to take the high-ground. She leaped to the wall, jumped off against the bricks and then landed on a rain-pipe, which she used to climb her way to the top of the building. Her body was fit and lean and she was fitter than most humans were. After that fateful day, more than a year-and-a-half back, she had been approached by a young girl with red hair and dark highlights. She had been offered a hand and friendship…unlike she had been offered by any other human in her life. She had been reluctant at first –even though she had yet to encounter the full filth of mankind. But…after _that_ had happened…she had been so desperate for a friend that she had gone to the one person who she even suspected she could trust. And she had gained more than just one friend; she had gained a purpose. A new purpose in her life.

And she had been quick to take the actions needed to rise up to that purpose. That had all been a year ago; one year since all Four had realized the futility of mankind. The subjugation of Vale was just one step in their plan; but multiple factions had made it very hard for them to set their plans in motion. Only two months ago had they actually started to wage open warfare against the people of Vale and even then, they had been sticking to the shadows.

But no longer. If the army was going to interfere again, like they had been doing when things became too hot in Vale, they would step up their game.

Blake slowly walked to the edge of a rooftop she had reached about twenty minutes after having found the blood and was pleasantly surprised to see her target standing down in a dark alley, all alone. He was leaning against a wall and from the looks of it, he was still hurting from Weiss' blow. A kill at that point should be a relieve for him…

She wouldn't provide that relieve. She would make sure that he knew what he had done to her by killing two of her subjects; she was going to hurt him like she only humans.

Which meant a lot.

Blake was about to jump down from the roof and reveal herself, when the soldier reached up and took his helmet off. Perhaps in an attempt to relieve the pain, perhaps to see to another need. His reason for doing so was unimportant, but the effect of his deed was what counted –and it was precisely that effect that made Blake stay her hand.

The soldier had a young face, showing that he couldn't be much older than she was. His hair was dark and messy and his skin was pale, as to be expected from major blood-loss. All in all he could be considered handsome, but that was not important to her. What was important was the fact that two fox-ears stuck out from above his hair, as dark and fluffy as his hair was.

Her normally calm heart skipped a beat and her breath hitched. Confusion and anger rose to the front of her mind and she clenched her fists. A Faunus? A Faunus had turned his hand to her troopers, killing them without hesitation?

"What the fuck…" she whispered and narrowed her eyes. Why? Why would a Faunus kill other Fauna? Weren't humans supposed to be the only ones who willingly killed their own kind? This had to be some trick…she should have smelled it earlier!

No…this wasn't a trick. She could smell his odour now, tainted by the chemicals and blood, but undeniably there. He was a true Faunus…which meant that she couldn't just kill him. A warrior like him…she could use him in the White Fang. But what was he doing here? Why?

She needed to interrogate him. She could use more lieutenants for her groups, but information was the most important at the moment.

Her ears picked up the subtle sound of metal touching stone and she immediately spun around, just in time to spot a mine burrowing itself out of the stone roof that she was sitting on. There was no time to think; no time to assess the situation. Blake jumped and forced her body downwards, avoiding a deadly hail of shrapnel when the hidden explosive detonated and sent pieces of rock everywhere.

She clung to a metal bar that extended out of a wall, roughly three meters above the soldier, and frantically searched the alley for any indication that this was an ambush. Such treachery! How had she not noticed that?

"Here kitty kitty," a female voice taunted her and she instinctively jumped off of the metal bar, landing on a patch of ground a few meters away from her initial target. She had expected an immediate attack on her vantage point, but it never came. Nobody shot at her.

She eyed the Faunus, who hastily donned his helmet. He hadn't been responsible; he was just as confused as she was.

A figure jumped from the opposite roof and landed in front of her, in-between Blake and her target.

The newcomer wore tight, dark-blue armour that seemed to accentuate the gracious curves of her body. She was wearing a helmet with a nonreflective visor and her suit was way more streamlined than the fox' was.

Even though Blake was eyeing her new enemy within a span of two seconds, she could see how the female's demeanor was extremely confident, very nearly cocky.

She frowned and readied her Gambol's Shroud. "What-"

"Just happened? A trap," the female soldier finished her sentence for her. Her voice was calm, confident and…slightly seductive. It reminded Blake of herself. That wasn't very positive.

"Who are you?" she asked the new soldier.

The female turned her head to her shoulder and told the fox-Faunus: "Get out of here."

It wasn't intended to save him, if the soldier's tone was any indication. It sounded angry and sneering, as if she didn't want the kid around when things went serious.

"What is going on?" the soldier replied uncertainty. It appeared that he was completely uninformed of the ambush that had been staged. "Who is… is that-?"

"Code-name Pariah," the soldier cut him off. From underneath her helmet, her words sounded muffled and twisted. "Lima Two-Three, you are interfering with a high-priority operation. Move out before I execute you."

Wow. Blake didn't have any words for what just happened, although she supposed it was a perfect example of the relationship between humans and Fauna. She had come here to kill the male soldier, but she supposed that she could simply shift her attention to the female instead. After all, threatening the boy to execute him simply because she had used him as bait? That was unacceptable even if it had been the other way around.

The Faunus-kid straightened his back, saluted the female soldier and then ran away. Plain as that. The woman just threatened to murder him for being there and he took it? Just how deeply integrated was this racism? Even in the military such things didn't fly!

She wouldn't stand for it. Shit like this was why she hated humans so much. She wanted to kill this bitch desperately, but she needed more information. If they were to effectively counter this new military threat, they couldn't just run around killing random members…as much as she would have wanted to. No, she needed to be discreet for now. "Who are you?"

"Irrelevant," the soldier replied and assumed a combat stance. Her suit's streamlined design made her look like a martial artist…this could get interesting. And what did she mean with 'irrelevant'? How were names irrelevant?

"I tracked that boy down in half an hour," Blake told the woman calmly, taking her own stance as well. "After I deal with you, I'll find him again."

"Why did you think you found him in the first place?" the female replied with and equally calm voice. "Come on kitty cat, think."

Despite her years of training and emotional balancing, Blake had to fight to repress a blush. No 'one called her that, not ever. The nickname was insulting, degrading and humiliating and not even her friends got away with calling her that. To think that this…this _human _thought that she could just…_tame_ her by calling her that was the final insult of tonight.

Blake lunged forwards with her sword, aiming at the human's neck. She brought her cleaver-sheath up at the same time, slicing in the opposite direction of her katana. But the human was as fast as the Faunus was and immediately deflected the first strike with a large, black knife. When the cleaver slashed at her chest, she simply stepped to the side and whipped a second knife out, aiming it at Blake's head.

Blake brought her center of mass forwards and flipped backwards, lashing out with her legs while she evaded the first strike. Because she had flipped her body upside-down, she couldn't see what she hit with her feet. But gathered from what she _felt, _she had simply hit the woman's armoured forearms.

The raven-haired girl recovered her position and immediately lunged forwards again, unleashing a flurry of strikes with both of her weapons. The female countered all of those strikes, ducked twice underneath a horizontal cleave and then lashed out with her own leg, trying to swipe Blake's legs out from underneath her body.

But the Faunus saw what the soldier was up to and jumped over her body, tapping into the power that lay hidden deep within her soul and using that to create the after-images that had been the undoing of dozens of capable fighters.

In the span of two seconds, Blake delivered six lightning-fast slashes that were aimed at the soldier's head, jumped over her head again while her afterimage distracted her and then unleashed several overhanded swipes at her head. It was a combo that she had used to take down a heavily upgraded AK-130 Droid –one that had been immune to bullets- and to date, it had never failed to dispatch of even the strongest foes.

The soldier evaded it all. The swipes with her katana were deflected with a precision and elegance that mirrored a ballet-dancer's and the unblockable slashes with her cleaver were simply dodged.

This human couldn't be a human. It was impossible. Only a very select amount of humans were capable of going toe-to-toe with her and surviving and all of them were her allies. There had to be a trick to this…the human was cheating in some way.

Blake jumped backwards and brought the pistol-section of her weapon to bear. Of course the female's armour would be bulletproof, but at least she could see just how all of her attacks were blocked like that.

She pulled the trigger in rapid succession, but the soldier had moved at the exact same moment that Blake had moved. She jumped for the nearest wall, twisted her torso away so that the shots missed her by a margin of centimeters and then brought her left arm forwards, poising it so that it was pointing directly at Blake.

The cat-Faunus didn't hesitate for a moment and deployed her katana gain. And just in time, as the soldier activated some sort of ballistic-knife launcher that was integrated with her gauntlet, sending six blades racing towards her body with speeds that rivalled bullets.

She deflected five out of six of the projectiles, evaded the sixth and used the momentum of her dodge-move to swing her cleaver at the human. She had messed around long enough; there was no trick to the human's skills. This soldier was as fast as she was and that was enough for Blake to want to disengage and fall back. It was impossible for any soldier to be that fast; this had to be a trap. Employ Fauna to confuse and then trap her. She hadn't smelled that the boy called 'Lima Two-Three' had been a Fauna because of his armour and she couldn't smell that this woman was a Fauna for the exact same reason.

Blake stepped backwards and thought of a way to buy time; to think her way out of this situation. "What did you mean?" she asked the girl. If she could simply recruit these two for her forces, she could wipe the infestation of human soldiers from the face of Vale. They were both gifted enough…if only she knew how to manipulate people like her friend could.

"We knew you were watching," the soldier replied. She maintained her combat stance but didn't press the attack. Any human would have long since used the brief moment of lull in the battle to tip the fight to their favors. It was all the more reason for her to believe that this soldier was in fact not one. "You couldn't resist someone who murdered your troopers, so you would go after him."

"Did he know that?" Blake asked. If the boy was a part of this insulting scheme, she would have to discipline him severely. You didn't play around with the lives of your brothers and sisters.

"Negative."

So this woman had used the fox-Faunus as bait? If that was the case, she was as much a predator as Blake was. If they were so alike…the possibilities for a new recruit were that much higher. "You lured me here. Using his trail to drive me to the roofs and then detonate an explosive. Why?"

"To make a point," the soldier replied. "You people have been in charge of Vale for a long time now. That will stop." The soldier was slowly walking towards Blake while she was talking, taking small and deliberately visible steps to close the distance between the two of them. The black-haired girl didn't want to give in and take a step backwards; that would show fear and submission. Blake was NOT the submissive type.

"Will it now?" she challenged the soldier.

"Yes," she replied and took another small step in Blake's direction, swaying her hips in a seductive manner. "From now on, you're not the hunter anymore. You don't fuck with us."

They were standing so close to each other that their chests were basically touching each other; the soldier's chestplate felt rather uncomfortable and Blake was all too aware of the intimacy of the situation. She didn't like that one bit.

"Who is 'us'?" she asked the female. "Who am I fucking with?"

She could imagine the soldier smirking underneath her helmet. "Nobody."

"Are you nobody?"

"According to _them_, I am."

The message was clear; that last sentence hadn't been aimed as a taunt or a joke. The soldier had been dead serious and in a way, it saddened Blake. This woman –this Faunus- was just as trapped in the vicious environment of humanity as she was.

The helmeted female was probably aware of the fact that she had slipped up, because the air grew tense and painful. Blake could feel the cold plate pressing against her warm chest and as the soldier cocked her head to the side, she started to suspect that she was being observed very keenly.

The tension lasted for a few more seconds, before something changed in the atmosphere. Both Blake and the soldier then stepped backwards and the Faunus realized that, if she didn't act now, the opportunity would be lost forever.

"Join us then," she asked the soldier and extended her hand. She could use a lieutenant that had such a strong will –such a powerful personality. She could think of a dozen different ways to use such a person. "Stop letting these humans oppress you. We can help you –I can help you." There was obviously something wrong with this lady and if she could just convince her to see it that way, would gain a powerful ally…and perhaps more than that.

The soldier lowered her head for a second, before raising it again and changing her entire attitude. Her back straightened, her fists clenched and a severely _hostile _tension seeped into her body. "You can't help me, Pariah."

Pariah huh? Permafrost for Weiss and Pariah for her? These people liked their nicknames. It suggested that their organization knew more about the Four than they let on…but that would change soon. And she had to admit that the name was very fitting. A Pariah; an exile, an outcast. Someone spit on and frowned upon by the rest of society.

Yes, it fit her very well. But she wondered what name the powerful woman in front of her possessed; she hadn't disagreed with Blake's statements, so her attitude couldn't be much different from her own. "Pariah…I like it. Do you like your name?"

"Like? A name is there to identify you. Nothing else."

"That doesn't answer my question."

"I know."

When the soldier didn't take her hand, Blake lowered it. "If you're not with us, you're against us."

"I know," the soldier repeated, but with much more glee in her voice. "It's the sole reason why I am in Vale; to fight you four. Does that excite you?"

"It doesn't," she told the woman with a scowl. "You underestimate us. You don't know our contacts; our allies. The Vale Police Department can't contain us…the army can't fight us. What makes you so certain?"

"In time, kitten. For now…I'm letting you go."

She was _letting _her go? "What makes you think I will let _you_ go?"

"This," the soldier retorted and pulled a spherical device out of a pocket in her armour. She pressed the red button and the walls surrounding them lit up with red lights.

Blake quickly counted two dozen of the flickering illumination, on both walls. The helmeted woman had rigged the alley beforehand?"

"Two days," she told the soldier and sheathed her weapons. "Then we're coming for your group."

"I'm looking forward to it," her enemy replied. Her voice was just a whisper and it sounded all the more threatening for it.

The cat-Faunus frowned and turned around. She would get them eventually, both of them. She would discipline them, train them and incorporate them in the White Fang. And if they didn't want to; if they refused even in the face of death…they would die. She had no patience for fools that didn't understand their duty.

But all in due time. For now, she had other things to attend to. More important things.

Pariah…it fit indeed.

~0~

"_So, seeing as nobody else had the capabilities to do so, we stepped in. We swept through the city with all three of our Operatives, supported by air-units and specialized Hunter-Killer troopers. We cleansed the city of all gang leaders, crime-lords and corrupt politicians. We decapitated the head of the corruption that was smothering the city…and we had thought that this action had saved Vale. But after the first day of our operations…I'm beginning to suspect that we did something much worse than that."_

_A brief history of the Fall of the Four, pt. 1 _


	3. Phoenix

_Back again with Chapter Three. This one is shorter than normal, so sorry for that._

_**Scourge From Bloodclan: **__yes, a sort of 'trailer' chapter for each member of RWBY :)_

_Also, Onyx has extremely few Fauna in their ranks. We only saw one up to now. Also, scars are awesome indeed, though not always visible._

_**Coolheadluke: **__thanks!_

_**Rwbybomb21: **__hmm…I see your point about Blake. However, she has reasons in this story that she doesn't have in canon. Also, things might change. They might get worse, but they might change._

_And yes, the three Operatives will appear. _

~0~

"_Fireteam Lima is the best choice for scouting out the Four's abilities, sir. They have had the most experience in their encounters with the girls and we need to continue to let them do so, until the first casualties arise. After that we can send in the Field Agents and, should that fail, the Operatives. All three of them are in town now."_

"_Don't give me that. We're not going to mess with human lives over here; I have already received a report from one of the Operatives that she has encountered Pariah, so only involving troopers isn't going to work anyway. One last mission and then we'll send in the Agents."_

"_Sir, Adamant sir."_

_Conversation between Matt Adamant and (ERROR –DATA REDACTED)_

~0~

**Vale City District, 00:18**

The dark streets were quiet; all streetlight had been deactivated in this zone long ago and the only groups that dared to show their faces were the kind of people that didn't care if they got themselves in some street-fight. The civilians in this sector were all scared out of their wits that they would be the next victims of a violent attack and most of them had already boarded up their homes, if they hadn't downright fled the district already. The Vale Police Department had created a 'safe zone' near the eastern-most part of the city, where those who couldn't stand the violence and terror anymore could live in relative peace. And that safe zone was getting contested each and every passing by the various groups of gangs and criminal syndicates. The area was roughly five by ten kilometers, so not a lot of civilians could rest easy in there.

But was to be expected. Onyx had just moved into the city two days ago; in the first twenty-four hours they had already encountered two of the students that had fallen from grace -Permafrost, the Dust-mistress and Pariah, the watching assassin- and those encounters had only served to increase Command's desire to press into the city.

So now, in the middle of the night, Lieutenant Yale had ordered Fireteam Lima to lead an advance strike-team into a criminal-occupied zone. Lima Two-One, Cal, had recovered just in time to take control over the group and even though the local Sergeant hadn't agreed with a bunch of black-op troopers taking over, Yale had been persuasive enough.

So now their team was also leading a dozen normal soldiers through the gloomy city, advancing upon what was supposed to be the hive of all the criminal activity.

They regrouped at the nearest open area and their commanding officer pulled open a digital map on his wrist-mounted Scroll. "Alright people, listen up," Cal Two-One told the soldiers. "This is the target building, code-named "Night Club"-"

"Night club huh? You guys really are geniuses," One of the army marines sneered.

Lily Two-Four felt the need to verbally lash out at the offending soldier, but Clayton Two-Two beat her to it.

"Can it soldier, or I'll beat your skull in!"

Clayton was Lima's muscle; he was their heavy-weapon specialist and their close-combat specialist. And the fact that he was six foot tall made it a bit harder for the foul-mouthed soldier to speak up against him.

"Like I said," Cal replied as if he hadn't been interrupted. It was a surprise that he could still think so level-headed after what had happened to him last night; first he had nearly been murdered by Permafrost, then he had been roughly debriefed and then he had been sent into the night again and then he had had the extremely bad luck to encounter both Pariah as an Operative. That the soldier was still alive was a miracle. "The Night Club. Intel believes that one of the four Primary Targets resides in there and if we're lucky, we'll catch her."

"Catch?" Another soldier asked. All the army marines were clad in normal camouflage battle-dress uniforms and only a few were wearing helmets. This was a helmetless one. "We should kill that bitch on sight! Drive a bullet through her skull, see if she can kill our buddies then!"

"Negative. The Lieutenant wants all four of them alive."

"What for?" The first one inquired. "They're obviously high-level threats! Who's your Lieutenant even?"

"The Lieutenant," Lily Two-Four growled at the soldier, "or Yale as your superiors know him, has his own reasons. You are here to follow orders." Alright, they hadn't really teamed up with the local marines or anything. Yale had simply flashed his credentials and the Colonel in charge of the National Army had immediately sent these twelve men to their aid.

"Who are you people even?" Another marine asked.

"Above your pay-grade dude," his fried whispered to him and then the topic was dropped again.

"Once we have reached the Club, we'll cut their power, infiltrate and surround the target. Any questions?"

"Rules of engagement?"

"On the streets, shoot to kill. In the club, preserve the target above all else. We cannot risk her dying on us."

The marines gave a weak and low-spirited chorus of "Yes sir's" and together, they moved out.

"Hey Two-One?" Lily asked their temporary leader.

"What is it?"

"What did that White Fang bitch want with you?"

Cal seemed to hesitate for a few seconds before he replied. "She figured out that I'm a Faunus. She most likely wants to draft me into their little cult, but…then the Operative appeared."

"Which one was it?" She lowered her voice to prevent any of the marines eaves-dropping on them.

"Not the insane one…not the big one…must have been the dancer," he quickly muttered back.

"You shouldn't listen to those rumors you know?" She then told him and quickly pretended to inspect her rifle when one of the soldiers turned around to check up on her.

"Street clear!" Clayton Two-Two cried out as he twisted around a corridor. He was currently taking the lead, allowing the rest of Fireteam Lima to take up a rear guard and prevent the group of marines from dying in a single ambush. Ash Two-Three had taken up their flank, but Lily had not been happy with his reappearance in the team. She didn't care what the psych exams had proven; the kid was unstable and a threat to their team. Vacuo had changed him for the worse and there would be no recovering for him.

But as she was a simple Onyx trooper, her opinion would only get her court-martialed. Not even their teamleader had a say in what happened in their team, after all.

She spotted a flash of movement in the street ahead of them and the soldiers and troopers grew dead-quiet. Three hooded men had walked onto the pavement, bottles of alcohol in their hands and pistols in their other hands.

Clayton didn't hesitate one second. His weapon barked twice and one of the soldiers opened fire too, downing the three armed people in an instant. No sooner had the echoes of their discharges reached their ears or they all burst into a sprint, focused on reaching their objective before the target could bolt. Nobody checked to see if any of the men were still alive and neither did anyone care. This far into the city, anyone on the street was either a thug or bait for an ambush.

Cal quickly divided their group into two teams; he and Clayton would take eight soldiers and set up a secure perimeter around the Night Club, while Lily and Ash would take the other four soldiers and breach the building. Nobody had any reason to really second-guess him and because of that, they were able to divide without too much incident.

Of course, Lily had her doubts concerning her 'partner', but she didn't voice them. Ash had been perfectly fine before his experience and they had worked together most sublimely back then. If he had been declared fit for duty, her complaints had no ground at all. She liked him, but she didn't trust him.

Two-One and Two-Two took their group and separated from the rest of them, officially initiating their Operation. Lily and Ash lead their four soldiers through two more streets, at one point neutralizing an entire gang that had been occupying a building they had needed to cut through.

"Ah shit…" one of the younger marines muttered once he saw that one of their kills had been a girl no older than seventeen. Then he turned to the nearest support beam and retched.

His friend awkwardly patted him on his back. "Come on man. Could've been one of _them _that shot her. It could've just as easily been someone else who offed her."

"I know," the sick marine whispered and wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his uniform. "I know. Fucking Onyx bullshit."

Lily felt suddenly very aware of the beating of her heart, which felt extremely heavy and painful. She knew that it had been the friend himself who had shot the girl, but the man had been right. It could have been anyone of them. And that was where most of these soldiers seemed to be disturbed with; it could have been any other kid in that position. They had all come here to kill criminals and drug-lords and gangmembers and normally, that happened. But then there were times when the lines between black and white blurred over and then this happened. A teenage girl caught in a lethal firefight.

Ash checked if the body belonged to their target, verified that it did not and then gently closed her eyes and folded her wrists over her chest.

"Move out," Lily called and the marines focused their attention on the task at hand. The Club was coming very close now and she could already see the tinted glasses and rundown building. Nothing on the outside of that place would indicate that it was active in any way, but she knew better.

And if they were lucky, their target wouldn't even be there. This would only be another goose chase that had resulted in the deaths of enemy personnel without costing the lives of the brave men and women that Onyx had pulled inside of their war against Vale.

But they wouldn't be lucky. They never were.

"Lima Two-One, you copy?" She whispered into her comm and gestured for the marines to halt.

"_Two-One copies. Sitrep, over."_

"Eyeing the building now. Permission to breach?"

"_Roger that. We'll be in position in two minutes. Good hunting, Two-One out."_

Lily grimaced and positioned herself near the entrance, together with Ash and a very large marine.

"Ready?" the man asked her, not at all sounding rude."

She nodded. The man unslung a shotgun, stepped in front of the door and then blasted the hinges away.

"Breaching breaching!" He yelled as he kicked the door down. Ash and Lily were both smaller and nimbler than your ordinary trooper, so they were able to file after the bulky soldier without being hindred by him. The rest of the marines ran in after them and once the first hallway was clear, they advanced.

The doors ahead were easily eight meters wide, though only two meters high. As the soldiers approached them, they seamlessly slid apart and disappeared into the black walls. Music filled the air and a rhythmic thumping assailed their ears, but Lily didn't feel bothered by the loud music.

The interior of the Club was fancy and chaotic at the same time; the large dance-floor was silvery-white, while the walls around them were a dark shade of black. There were glass columns scattered throughout the interior and she could see several protruding balconies that could function as vantage points for the enemy.

The two troopers led the marines down a flight of white stairs and one of the soldiers whistled.

"I could spent some time here myself," he muttered.

"Quiet," Lily hissed. Something was very wrong; the music was playing and the ground and walls were blurring over with the visual colour-changing effects…and the people were all dancing. Dozens of people were going nuts on the dancing-floor without even bothering to look at the group of heavily armed soldiers that had just burst into their Club. A single man with a black sweater stood at the top of one of the balconies, a large bear-head over his own head

"Hey, I know that guy!" One of the marines said. "That's DJ Deadb3ar; he's excellent!"

"Will you shut up?" Another marine snapped.

"So where's the target?" Ash Two-Three asked softly.

"Don't know, but keep sharp. " Then she nodded at the large marine, who lifted his shotgun in the air and fired a shell at the ceiling. She sound was deafening, but apart from flinching, nobody responded.

"This is getting creepy."

They then proceeded to advance deeper into the club, moving towards the bar where two young ladies were standing. One of them had a red corset and the other one had a white skirt. Both of them had dark hair and both of them were obviously armed; the white-clothed one had long blades attached to her boots, while the red-clothed one had metal claws attached to her wrist. They appeared to be twins.

Those looked like customers alright.

Ash spread the soldiers out in a rough pattern and they all brought their weapons on the dancers. Said dancers were all keeping rigidly to their affairs, but most of them were visibly struggling to keep ignoring them.

"Ladies," Lily snapped at the two girls, the large soldier standing by her side. They looked about her age and that did not make it easy to deal with them at all. She was renowned for being gifted in both the mental as social areas, but that was more because the rest of her team was so much worse than she was. "Blind to the group of soldiers barging into your club, are you? Who runs this place?"

The two girls immediately tensed up at her voice and the red one quickly averted her gaze and stumbled away from the bar. The white one scowled and turned to face Lily. "What do you want?"

Lily couldn't help but notice the bruises on the girl's neck and the deep cut that ran over her cheek. There was also a small, albeit nasty burn-wound underneath her jaw. "We're looking for someone. A girl, about your age-"

The white-clothed girl gasped and her eyes widened in open terror. After that, she immediately lashed out with her boot –the one with the razor-sharp blades attached.

Lily had no time to think, just to act. Years of training kicked her mind into overdrive and she parried the blow with her rifle. The red-clothed girl hesitated, but then moved to attack Ash, who had tried to talk to her too. People started screaming behind her and multiple weapons discharged, but none of the bullets were aimed at the fighting teens.

Not that the bullets would have penetrated their innate Aura anyway.

She attempted to aim at the girl, but the knifed boot knocked the rifle out of her arms and she was forced to improvise. She bashed her wrists together and two large blades sprung out of the metal sheaths, sliding out of her armoured forearms and extending a good three feet over her hands. The blades were fixed at one point, so they couldn't be turned or twisted –as the girl quickly found out when she attempted to beat them away with a flurry of kicks.

Lily grunted as she blocked a particularly powerful blow and immediately counterattacked, performing an intricate movement that might have been welcome on the dancing floor, had it not been executed with such lethal intents. The sharp points of her blades sliced through the air and were met by the girl's boots, but the obviously martial art attacks were only based on her legs. Without her using her arms, the girl might as well have been dancing. Her blades impacted on the white-clothed female's boots and then Lily spun around then, delivering a powerful elbow-thrust to her enemy's face.

The girl jumped out of the way and hastened to disengage. Lily spotted the clawed girl slicing at Ash, who had brought his own weapons to bear on her. Thin-bladed machetes were clashing with crooked edges and from the looks of it, the two of them should have been fighting together. With the combined prowess of leg-based attacks and arm-based attacks, the twins could have easily overwhelmed any trooper that Onyx could have sent.

But they weren't working together and something was obviously distracting them; some strong emotion was keeping them back and everytime a lull fell in their battle, Lily spotted the white-clothed girl nervously looking around. She struck at one such moment, engaged in a fiery dance of lethal slashes and quickly parried three blows in a row. Then she went on the offensive and slashed at her foe with increasing speed and ferocity, until she eventually sliced through the thin fabric and pushed the girl over the counter. She hadn't drawn any blood, but the attack had completely ruined her foe's concentration and Lily quickly jumped over the counter to deliver the finishing blow

At least, she tried to do that. What happened instead was that her body was flung through the interior of the Club and flung to the dancing floor, where the ground was slick with blood and glass. Bodies were covering the ground and as she jumped to her feet to engage her new enemy, pieces of glass falling from her black bodysuit, she saw that the majority of the bodies belonged to black-clothed men with hats and glasses. Junior's henchmen –they had once belonged to a man called Junior, who had been rumored to own this club.

But she was unable to get back up fast enough and something incredibly powerful smashed into her body, exploding the very second it touched her body. Waves of heat and concussion washed over her body and she was flung right through a glass pillar, before skidding over the ground and smashing into the wall. Lances of pain shot up and down her body and while she attempted to rise again, a new sensation carved through her ribs with such flaring intensity that a short scream escaped her lips.

Then a hand grabbed her helmet, obscuring her vision and pulling her from the ground.

"Welcome to my Club," a female voice spoke and Lily winced as the pressure on her head increased. She was flung to the ground again and all the air got knocked out of her lungs. White spots appeared in front of her eyes and she gasped. Then, someone ripped her helmet off her head and the bright rays of light from the party-lights temporarily blinded her, as there was no polarized helmet protecting her now.

But when she did see again, she almost wished she didn't. She saw two moustached men holding a limp and bloodied Ash, who had a large knife sticking out of his right leg and left shoulder. His head was hanging, so he had to be either unconscious or dead. The twins were standing a few feet in front of her, looks of absolute terror and fear defacing their otherwise pretty faces. The red-clothed one was as bruised as her sister was.

"What…" Lily muttered, but then she saw the third girl, standing right behind the twins.

It was a teenage girl with long blonde hair that had a single streak of fiery red woven throughout it. Both colours became darker in colour at the tips and a few locks of hair stuck out on the top of her head, together with a small cowlick. Her pale complexion and deep red eyes were as iconic as her loose and messy manner of wearing her hair and Lily could identify the girl based on that alone.

"Hello," the girl grinned.

"Phoenix…" Lily whispered, feeling a cold pit drop into her stomach. "Yang Xiao Long." Captured and at the mercy of Phoenix was one of the last places she wanted to be in her life. She ran her eyes across the girl's body in the hopes of finding anything she could use, but the only thing she really noticed was that she was wearing different clothes than the last time she had been spotted. Phoenix was now wearing long black stockings that ended in gothic-styled boots with spikes around the ankles, a pair of extremely small shorts and some black and white top that was cut out very low to reveal an ample chest. A deep purple scarf hung from a black belt wrapped around her hips and her trademark gauntlets were attached to her wrists, albeit not activated.

Phoenix had her arms wrapped around the shoulders of the twins, who were looking more frightened than ever. The way they blushed and looked away suggested that this wasn't the first time this had happened. Were they embarrassed? Hurt? Both?

"You know, I expected more from Onyx than this," the blonde said and her grin deepened as she gestured around the club. The two men holding Lily by her shoulders had painfully twisted her arms behind her back, but now they turned her around to look at the carnage that had been wrought. The four soldiers were all dead. More than fifteen of the fancy-clothed men lay on the ground, also dead. Four marines against fifteen criminals in overwhelming odds…they had still put up such a fight.

"Where's Junior?" Lily asked, feeling her ribs twinge with each word.

"Dead," Phoenix replied offhandedly. "My turn: where is the rest of your team?"

She didn't answer. Phoenix obviously didn't like that, as she immediately closed in on Lily and knelt before her. She roughly grabbed Lily's chin and wrenched her head upwards, forcing her to look in those awful red eyes.

"I asked you something!" Phoenix yelled at her.

Despite the overwhelming waves of fear that coursed through her body, Lily kept her mouth shut. She had been trained for this…she had been trained for this…

But then, much to her despair, Phoenix smiled. It was a cruel smile that shouldn't possess the slightest amount of humor. "Alright then." Then she turned to one of the henchmen. "Hurt the boy."

How did Phoenix know that Ash was a boy?

The mook appeared startled at the order, but nonetheless he stumbled towards the still limp body of Lima Two-Three.

Lily knew that this was going to happen and it wouldn't change a thing. She half expected the blonde to give her a second chance to spill her information, but that didn't happen. The henchmen stopped in front of Ash, hesitated and then turned to face Phoenix.

But the red-eyed girl glared at the man with such a hateful glare that Lily could have sworn that the room had grown hotter and the henchmen, trembling and nervous, reached for one of the knifes that had been jammed inside of the soldier's body. With a sickening sound, he twisted the knife inside of the wound. Ash jerked and trashed and his head shot up. It appeared he had regained consciousness again.

"Anything?" Phoenix asked. She didn't even give Lily a chance to answer, as she quickly added: "No? More then."

The henchmen softly groaned and punched Ash in his stomach. Once…twice…three times total.

Lily remained silent as she watched the young and already greatly disturbed soldier getting wailed upon by the henchmen .Two more joined him and they ganged up on the kid, beating and hitting him without holding back.

Then Phoenix snapped her fingers and one of them tore off Ash's helmet. The piece of armour clattered on the ground and the blonde laughed.

"I got all night. What did your buddies tell you about us? About me? Do you even know who you're fucking with here, kid?"

Lily forced herself to look at the blonde's animalistic red eyes. "Code-name Phoenix…criminal lord and one of the four primary targets." Her blades were still extended and if she could just gain enough leverage, she might be able to break free and…buy them enough time for the rest of their team to safe them. She knew better than think that she might be able to beat Phoenix.

"Phoenix huh? Is that where my tax money went? Getting a bunch of morons to come up with cute nicknames?"

Lily didn't respond. Her partner's pale face was horribly accentuated by the flashing lights and she could see very well how scared he was. Ash had great difficulty dealing with normal situations, let alone situations like these. She just hoped that he wouldn't do anything stupid.

"Anyway," the blonde then said and started to walk away, pushing the twins ahead of her. "I don't have time to make you talk myself…and you fuckers messed this place up, so…." She turned around and flashed them a cruel smile. "I think I'll leave you in the care of these guys. You know, the friends of the men you just killed?"

When the henchmen heard that, their nervous demeanor disappeared. Perhaps it was the thought of Phoenix leaving, or the reminder that the ground was littered with their corpses, but they didn't look that scared anymore.

The red-eyed girl shifted her attention to the henchmen. "Do whatever you want to the girl…and to the boy, if you're into that sort of thing."

Then she walked away with the two terrified girls, leaving the angry-looking men to either threateningly crack their knuckles, chuckle deeply, unfastening pieces of clothing or simply glaring menacingly.

"I don't feel so good…" Ash muttered.

"Don't worry Ash," she softly replied as the men behind her forced her to the ground. "You're going to be fine." If she could just get a bit more freedom, she might be able to break free. She couldn't bear lying to the kid, but she had no choice. He had to keep his hopes up.

Someone placed a knife near her throat, holding it there threateningly while one of the henchmen approached Ash with a red axe, its bladed head gleaming morbidly in the disco lights. She heard a nasty laugh behind her and a foot obscured her vision of her partner.

Then a ragged scream shook the men on top of her out of their revenge-fueled stupor. Another scream followed the first one and then the man standing in front of her stepped aside, perhaps to deal with whatever was causing the screaming. She was glad he did, because now she could see what was going on. The man standing left of Ash was clutching his right wrist, where a piece of white, jagged bone had penetrated the skin. The man to his right was lying on the floor without moving, a trickle of blood running out of his nose.

With the henchmen that had been busy with her distracted by Ash's sudden retaliation, Lily was free to finish her arm-movements.

And she did. With a sudden jerk, she pulled her arms free and nearly cut through the arms holding her. The criminal yelled and fell to the ground, clutching his bleeding arms. Lily quickly jumped to her feet and moved towards Ash to assist him, but immediately stopped after staring at the scene before her for just a second.

Lima Two-Three had done a complete one-eighty. Gone was the nervous and traumatized child that had just come back from his psych evaluation. The soldier that was now murdering all attacking henchmen was nothing like that; his pupils were dilated, his face a mask of sheer aggressive focus and his limbs moving with a technique that was completely different from his normal techniques.

It was like a completely different person had taken on his identity and it disturbed her deeply. But she didn't have time to linger on Ash's strange behavior; more hostiles with rifles were running to the dance floor and she had mere seconds to clear out of there. Phoenix had disappeared and if they stayed, they would get murdered.

Or worse.

"Three, move!" She yelled at the kid and turned to run, heading for the windows at the side of the building. Without checking to see if he was following her, Lily burst into an agonizing sprint that hurt with each step that she took. Bullets exploded on the ground underneath her feet and one of them pinged off of the armour on her back; she felt the round impact and winced as her lungs nearly emptied themselves. The blonde bitch had pounded her Aura-reserves flat with just a single punch and if she got nailed now, she wouldn't live to tell about it.

She reached the window and threw herself through it, protecting her face with her arms to prevent the worst damage. She fell two meters and hit the ground with a loud _thud_.

After a few seconds of silence –it might as well have been hours- she heard shouts coming from outside. She recognized Lima Two-Two amidst the voices and felt relieved. A body impacted right behind her and this time, she could make out what Clayton was shouting about; her name and Ash's name. That was good; it meant that both of them had survived.

She heard footsteps approaching her, but then everything went black

~0~

Yang dropped down the roof and approached the unaware soldier from the rear, making no sound as she walked up to him. Normally, she liked to look people in their eyes as she murdered them –like she had done with Junior- but this situation warranted a…new way to approach things/

She grabbed the soldier by his helmet and then bashed his head against the wall, killing him with a sickening crunch. As the lifeless body slumped to the ground, she eyed his appearance. He was wearing the camouflage clothes that the army so loved and judging by his face, he had been somewhere in his late twenties.

She liked them younger than that.

"Well girls," she told the Malachite twi seductive tone as they too dropped down the roof. The two girls looked absolutely terrified…as they well should be. They had been there when she had sought out the Night Club again, days ago. There she had kicked the living daylights out of the twins, murdered fifteen of Junior's henchmen before finally confronting the head man himself.

And then she had beaten him to death. It had been a very successful day, even more so because her sister always told her to take it easy and keep her head down. But two months ago they had openly started waging their war against Vale, meaning that she had officially started her rampage through the city. It had taken her more than forty days to fully beat the fear of her name into the city, but she had been very successful. More so than Blake or Weiss. And she had completely celebrated that fear by paying her favorite club a visit –only to find out that a bunch of soldiers had started messing the place up.

She had not been amused.

"W-where do we g-go?" Melanie asked her. Yang had forced herself to learn their names, as calling someone by their front name created a certain intimacy…which went coupled with a great deal of disturbance of course. And she liked messing with her victim's heads. Not in the way that her sister did, but still.

"I don't care," she replied and kicked the soldier's corpse aside. "As long as you don't get caught, because I'll have to hunt you down if you do."

"W-we'll stay free!" Miltiades assured her. "R-really! We w-will!"

Yang ignored that last pathetic plea and turned her back to the two girls. "What are you waiting for then? Run."

The Malachites didn't need to be told twice and they quickly ran away from the scene, even as distant shouts grew louder and more pronounced.

The blonde smiled and decided that this was a perfect night to look up a few of her friends and start discussing some things. The army had left Vale mostly alone up to now, even though the city was clearly an anarchy-filled hellhole. Normally, she couldn't stand cowardice, but the absence of large and bulky soldiers running through the streets hadn't been unwanted either. But nothing lasted forever and instead of filling the city with normal soldiers that could be killed with a glancing punch, some mister big shot out there had decided to send commandos to Vale. And that greatly complicated things.

Not that it would matter in the end. Hell; she had been capable of flooring the boy with a single punch, after which she had thrown the girl around with even greater ease. For two people that had been leading four adult soldiers into battle, those kids hadn't been very entertaining. Still, it had been impressive to see that neither of them wanted to talk, even as she was ordering the blockheads around her to torture them for their information. Perhaps they had been commandos in training?

Yang jumped over a fence and landed in a dark alley, where she quickly oriented herself towards the west.

But she had left with the twins nonetheless, as soldiers were just like criminals. You never encountered a simple, small group. And as much as she had liked the Night Club, it had been expendable. She didn't really know if the two kids were still alive, but she had still messed them up badly. It would take them days to recover and by then, Yang and her friends would have enough information to make the first move.

And her sister really did not want to share the city. She had been playing a deadly game of chess against all of Vale, where victory meant total control. Gangs, crime syndicates and even drug traffickers all tried to oppose them and they were all just cannon fodder in the way of the real threat. The little redhead had predicted that some city or Kingdom would send soldiers to 'liberate' Vale, but none of them had expected the soldiers so soon.

Yang's purple necklace bungled against her chest as she jumped over a the rooftops, reminding her of why she was so concerned with Vale's fate. Her younger sister was the only real family she had left…and it was because of her that Yang had come to understand why and how things worked in the world. Remnant was no fairy tale…and their city was the proof of that. All around them was death and cruelty and what had the other cities done to help them? What had the Kingdoms done to save Vale?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing at all. And only now, more than a year after everything had gone to hell, they were sending in soldiers to try and 'fix' things? Nobody would stand for that. She wouldn't stand for that. Things were going to change in Vytal very soon…and if they had to slaughter their way to their goal, that was exactly what was going to happen.

Which government decided to let kids rule their armies anyway? Bunch of morons…

Yang had just reached a large parking lot when her scroll buzzed. Feeling curious, she reached down and grabbed the device. It had three new messages; one had been sent by Weiss, one had been sent by Blake and the newest one…didn't have a name on it. Strange.

She opened the message without a name first and immediately felt a wave of annoyance washing over her, with a ripple of anger underneath that.

'_This is an emergency message sent to all scrolls in the vicinity. _

_The civilian safe-zone is located with the Vale Police Department. Onyx combat personnel will assist the safe zone whenever possible. All civilians are to directly support each other in the absence of a governing structure.'_

As if that wasn't bad enough, a sickening little message to the people had been attached to the emergency message.

'_Stay safe out there people.´_

She groaned and quickly archived the message under ´spam´. So this ´Onyx´ was personally meddling with Vale now? Had they been responsible for the commandos? Well, their 'combat personnel' hadn't really been effective as of yet, so she wasn't going to spent sleepless nights anytime soon.

Yang opened the message from Weiss, saw that it was an old one and quickly deleted it. Then she opened Blake's one.

'_Yang,_

_I am coming to find you. We need to discuss important things._

_Blake.'_

Well, wasn't that a cute little message? Why on earth would that girl be looking for her? Had she had her own run-in? Did she want to discuss Faunus civil rights with her? In that case, she had better scram quickly. She had no desire to have chitchat with Blake, even though the situation sort of warranted it.

But she waited nonetheless, as her younger sister often sent Blake with important messages. Yang thought it was because animals were fitter to carry out such duties, but was just her personal opinion. When had the message been sent? Oh, twenty minutes ago. Right.

Yang sighed and sat down near a black car, whirling a hand through her long hair and waiting for Blake to show her cat-eared face. The thing was that her younger sister had made sure that their scrolls would be safe from police hacking…and now this 'Onyx' guys had hacked their scrolls without even using the information that was stored on it. So either they were very thick, or they had used some sort of mass-hacking technique to crack all of their scrolls. But did something like that really exist? How had these guys even hacked her scroll? Did they have some technical wizard in their group?

She heard a faint rustling noise somewhere behind her and quickly whirled around, unfolding her Ember Celica´s to unload a blast of singing heat in the face whoever it was that had dared to disturb her.

But it was only sneaky little Blake, standing behind her with an obvious smug expression.

"Sup?"

Yang was not amused. "Will you stop doing that?" She bit at the Faunus. "I hate it!"

"Cry me a river. So, got my message?"

"I did," Yang replied with a growl. "And another one too."

Blake raised her eyebrows. "Another one?"

Yang showed her the message from 'Onyx' and half expected Blake to start laughing.

She did not expect Blake to start scowling. "You got one too? What frequency are these guys broadcasting from?"

"Uhh…what?"

"I got the same message," the girl replied as she rolled with her eyes. "I tried to track it through the net, but I found nothing. Then I tried to track its origins, but also nothing."

"You…tried to track it?"

"Not everyone is a barbarian Yang. Some people can defend themselves from cyberwarfare at times."

"But not today."

"No, not today."

"So why did you want to meet me?"

"Your sister asked Weiss to stage the test for the new soldiers in town. They failed…at first."

"Test?" Yang asked. "The whole burning building thing?"

"Yes," Blake replied with a frustrated expression. "That one. At first, the soldier in charge had chosen the bomb over the family. But then she found out that he had in fact called for reinforcements."

"Seriously?"

"Yes. And they disarmed the bomb, while he and his team saved the civilians."

"That sucks."

Blake raised an eyebrow. "It does not. No lives were wasted, albeit the Schnee target will have to be targeted another time."

"Belladonna, cut the crap. What do you want?"

The girl took a step back at that sudden outburst, appearing disturbed. But she regained her arrogant composure almost immediately. "Recently, I was attacked by people from an organization that calls itself Onyx."

"Shit. Seriously?"

"Yes. I tracked down the soldier –he's a Faunus by the way- and then I got ambushed by this…this girl."

"Yep, because that's accurate. _This girl…"_

"She was an expert martial artist, gifted with a blade…and I think she's a Faunus too."

Blake's obsession with other Fauna was growing wild and out of control now. "Seriously. Who the hell cares? If she's with Onyx, you kill her." When Blake didn't reply, Yang grew annoyed again. "You did kill her, right?"

"Like I said, I think she's a Faunus. She managed to get the drop on me and that bought the other soldier time to escape."

She groaned loudly. "You kidding me? Blake, newsflash! Onyx is the ENEMY!"

"I know," the Faunus replied and turned her back to the blonde. "But she was…different. I think she'll be useful in the future…so I let her go."

"So you got jumped by some chick from this Onyx. Big deal. My club got raided this night."

That got Blake's attention alright. "Your club got raided? what's that supposed to mean?"

"Precisely what it says on the tin, idiot. This group of soldiers entered my Night Club, fought the two bitches, killed at least a dozen of my henchmen and destroyed my property."

"What happened?"

"MY Night Club, Blake. Of course they're all dead. Mostly."

"Mostly?"

"Yeah. Dead or…raped or…wounded."

"…that's a lot of diversity, Yang. You're not making any sense."

She sighed and ran a hand through her hair. "Four normal marines and two armoured commandos appeared in my club. The marines fought with the henchmen, the commandos fought the girls and everything went to hell. Can you imagine the noise that these guys made? I had to personally come down and deal with them!"

"Deal with them?"

"Punched the guy in the gut and threw the girl across the room. Same difference. Junior's ex-henchmen managed to lose fifteen of their own in exchange for all four of the soldiers, just like I had expected."

"How did they know you were in the club though? Who could have told them that?"

"I haven't got the faintest idea. But they're dead now, so-"

"Yes, you said that already. Dead, raped or wounded. Which is it?"

She sighed exaggeratedly. "Does it matter? I had them captured by the guys and they had them at their mercy. I reminded them what they had lost due to these soldiers and I told them to go nuts. I don't care what they did, as long as those nuisances are gone."

"You told them to go nuts?"

"The way I figured it, they would either kill the commandos and I would kill them in return, or the commandos survive and we get to hunt them down. I win in both situations."

"You sound like a psychopath," Blake muttered and crossed her arms.

Yang smiled broadly. "I'm not. I just copy some of their better traits. Onyx is our enemy, Blake. Our leader already said, despite the tests, we ought to treat them like any normal criminal."

"Yeah, I figured as much. That Faunus-soldier? He survived. The two 'commandos' you should have killed also survived. I heard a policeman saying that they had been brought to the Safe Zone for immediate medical attention."

"That sucks."

"It does. What will you do now?"

"Do now?" Yang grinned, looking at the cat-Faunus with amusement. Blake didn't really get it; it didn't matter if the two commandos had survived or not. It didn't matter which soldier of Onyx would live to see another day and which one would die; their lovely leader had her plan and they would stick to it. In the end, no group would stand against them. No criminals, nor drug lords, no soldiers and no government. "I'm going to find one of the safehouses and crash on a bed. Not everyone likes scurrying around in the darkness, you know? We were never meant to start the killing so soon. Relax; nothing has changed. Nothing at all."

"In just two nights, all three of us were fought by these men and women. It is too coincidental, do you not agree?"

"You're being paranoid."

"Tell me this then," Blake then snapped at her. "Did you have a name for you?"

"Ehh…pardon me?"

"A name. Did they give you a name?"

Ah that. "Sure…Phoenix. Damn silly name. I wondered what that was about…" Even though that didn't mean anything to her, it still seemed to disturb Blake greatly. The Faunus' eyes widened and she awkwardly rubbed her elbow.

"I see. It's all three of us now then."

"You got a name too?"

"Yes, and Weiss too."

Yang grinned again. "What's yours?"

"Not important," Blake snapped. "What's important is that you were driven out of your Club-"

"I was NOT driven out!" Yang growled and fire was starting to manifest around her.

Blake raised an eyebrow. "Soldiers attacked you and here you are now. What else could have happened?"

"I simply left. The people that had attacked my club are mostly dead now, remember? I wanted to see my little sister again."

"So she has called for us all again?"

"Duh."

Blake sighed and crossed her arms over her chest. "Do try not to burn the safehouse down, will you? They are expensive."

"Yeah yeah, expensive blah blah blah. Can you get a message to little red?"

"I guess so."

Yang narrowed her eyes and her grin turned into a cruel smirk. "Ask her how much longer we have to keep our heads down. I want to go out hunting."

"You are not the only one, Yang," Blake replied with a smirk of her own. "She wishes to strike tomorrow, near the so-called Safe Zone. Tonight will be our…administrative gathering."

~0~

"_Can you tell me your name?"_

"_Yes sir. Ash Lima Two-Three, combat trooper second class. Of course I remember my name sir."_

"_Just a normal formality, Two-Three. Can you tell me what happened tonight?"_

"_We got captured by Phoenix. Some of her men hurt me and…and then Lily, Two-Four, saved us, I guess."_

"_You…guess__?"_

"_I can't really remember. I got a headache…and I must have gotten knocked out."_

"_You don't remember what happened in that Club?"_

"_Not much sir. I remember that Phoenix left and then things got blurry."_

"_I see. I want you to report to one of our Mental Health Specialists. Just a formality."_

"_Alright Councilor, if you say so…"_

Conversation between Lima Two-Three and Councilor ████████

_~0~_

_I think I am going to do the same thing as in When Destiny Burns_

_**Next time: **__The little red riding hood appears and Onyx declares open warfare to the Four._


End file.
